Verse is described as a heaven-sent instrument, the language of the gods; and its value in poetry consists in clarifying and making the design compact.[345] But it is not an essential of poetry; Aristotle permits us to poetize in prose; and the romances of Heliodorus and Montemayor are examples of this poetic prose.[346] The object of poetry is that it shall cause delight, and unless it succeeds in this it is entirely futile:-- "C'est le but, c'est la fin des vers que resjouir: Les Muses autrement ne les veulent ouir." As it is the function of the orator to persuade and the physician to cure, and as they fail in their offices unless they effect these ends, so the poet fails unless he succeeds in pleasing.[347] This comparison is a favorite one with the Italian critics. A similar passage has already been cited from Daniello; and the same notion is thus expressed by Lodovico Dolce: "The aim of the physician is to cure diseases by means of medicine; the orator's to persuade by force of his arguments; and if neither attains this end, he is not called physician or orator. So if the poet does not delight, he is not a poet, for poetry delights all, even the ignorant."[348] But delight, according to Vauquelin, is merely the means of directing us to higher things; poetry is a delightful means of leading us to virtue:-- "C'est pourquoy des beaus vers la joyeuse alegresse Nous conduit aux vertus d'une plaisante addresse."[349] Vauquelin, like Scaliger, Tasso, Sidney, compares the poet with God, the great Workman, who made everything out of nothing.[350] The poet is a divinely inspired person, who, _sans art, sans scavoir_, creates works of divine beauty. Vauquelin's contemporary, Du Bartas, has in his _Uranie_ expressed this idea in the following manner:-- "Each art is learned by art; but Poesie Is a mere heavenly gift, and none can taste The dews we drop from Pindus plenteously, If sacred fire have not his heart embraced. "Hence is't that many great Philosophers, Deep-learned clerks, in prose most eloquent, Labor in vain to make a graceful verse, Which many a novice frames most excellent."[351] While this is the accepted Renaissance doctrine of inspiration, Vauquelin, in common with all other followers of the Pleiade, was fully alive to the necessity of artifice and study in poetry; and he agrees with Horace in regarding both art and nature as equally necessary to the making of a good poet. It is usage that makes art, but art perfects and regulates usage:-- "Et ce bel Art nous sert d'escalier pour monter A Dieu."[352] II. _The Drama_