The greatest of these, Ronsard, has given expression to his views on the poetic art in his _Abrege de l'Art Poetique francois_ (1565), and later in the two prefaces of his epic of the _Franciade_. The chief interest of the _Abrege_ in the present discussion is that it expounds and emphasizes the high notion of the poet's office introduced into French poetry by the Pleiade. Before the advent of the new school, mere skill in the complicated forms of verse was regarded as the test of poetry. The poet was simply a _rimeur_; and the term "_poete_," with all that it implies, first came into use with the Pleiade. The distinction between the versifier and the poet, as pointed out by Aristotle and insisted upon by the Italians, became with the Pleiade almost vital. Binet, the disciple and biographer of Ronsard, says of his master that "he was the mortal enemy of versifiers, whose conceptions are all debased, and who think they have wrought a masterpiece when they have transposed something from prose into verse."[337] Ronsard's own account of the dignity and high function of poetry must needs be cited at length:-- "Above all things you will hold the Muses in reverence, yea, in singular veneration, and you will never let them serve in matters that are dishonest, or mere jests, or injudicious libels; but you will hold them dear and sacred, as the daughters of Jupiter, that is, God, who by His holy grace has through them first made known to ignorant people the excellencies of His majesty. For poetry in early times was only an allegorical theology, in order to make stupid men, by pleasant and wondrously colored fables, know the secrets they could not comprehend, were the truth too openly made known to them.... Now, since the Muses do not care to lodge in a soul unless it is good, holy, and virtuous, you should try to be of a good disposition, not wicked, scowling, and cross, but animated by a gentle spirit; and you should not let anything enter your mind that is not superhuman and divine. You should have, in the first place, conceptions that are high, grand, beautiful, and not trailing upon the ground; for the principal part of poetry consists of invention, which comes as much from a beautiful nature as from the reading of good and ancient authors. If you undertake any great work, you will show yourself devout and fearing God, commencing it either with His name or by any other which represents some effects of His majesty, after the manner of the Greek poets ... for the Muses, Apollo, Mercury, Pallas, and other similar deities, merely represent the powers of God, to which the first men gave several names for the diverse effects of His incomprehensible majesty."[338]