elements that went to make up classicism in France, so the author of the _Quintil Horatian_ may be said to represent in his humble way certain enduring elements of the _esprit gaulois_. He represents the national traditions, and he prepares the way for the two great bourgeois poets of France,--Boileau, with his "Tout doit tendre au bon sens," and Moliere, with his bluff cry, "Je suis pour le bon sens." According to Pelletier (1555), French poetry is too much like colloquial speech; in order to equal classical literature, the poets of France must be more daring and less popular.[384] Pelletier's point of view is here that of the Pleiade, which aimed at a distinct poetic language, diverse from ordinary prose speech. But he is thoroughly French, and in complete accord with the author of the _Quintil Horatian_, in his insistence on perfect clearness in poetry. "Clearness," he says, "is the first and worthiest virtue of a poem."[385] Obscurity is the chief fault of poetry, "for there is no difference between not speaking at all and not being understood."[386] For these reasons he is against all unnecessary and bombastic ornament; the true use of metaphors and comparisons of all sorts is "to explain and represent things as they really are." Similarly, Ronsard, while recognizing the value of comparisons, rightfully used, as the very nerves and tendons of poetry, declares that if instead of perfecting and clarifying, they obscure or confuse the idea, they are ridiculous.[387] Obscurity was the chief danger, and indeed the chief fault, of the Pleiade; and it is no small merit that both Ronsard and Pelletier perceived this fact. The Pleiade exhibits the classic temper in its insistence on study and art as essential to poetry; but it was not in keeping with the doctrines of later French classicists in so far as it regarded the poetic labors as of an unsociable and even ascetic character. In this, as has been seen, Ronsard is a true exponent of the doctrines of the new school. But on the whole the classic spirit was strong in him. He declares that the poet's ideas should be high and noble, but not fantastic. "They should be well ordered and disposed; and while they seem to transcend those of the vulgar, they should always appear to be easily conceived and understood by any one."[388] Here Du Bellay's aristocratic conception of poetry is modified so as to become a very typical statement of the principle underlying French classicism. Again, Ronsard points out, as Vida and other Italian critics had done before, that the great classical poets seldom speak of things by their bare and naked names. Virgil does not, for example, say, "It was night," or "It was day," but he uses some such circumlocution as this:-- "Postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras."