Webbe's _Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586) gives expression to a conception of the object of poetry which is the logical consequence of the allegorical theory, and which was therefore almost universally accepted by Renaissance writers. The poet teaches by means of the allegorical truth hidden under the pleasing fables he invents; but his first object must be to make these fables really pleasing, or the reader is deterred at the outset from any acquaintance with the poet's works. Poetry is therefore a delightful form of instruction; it pleases and profits together; but first of all it must delight, "for the very sum and chiefest essence of poetry did always for the most part consist in delighting the readers or hearers."[446] The poet has the highest welfare of man at heart; and by his sweet allurements to virtue and effective caveats against vice, he gains his end, not roughly or tyrannically, but, as it were, with a loving authority.[447] From the very beginnings of human society poetry has been the means of civilizing men, of drawing them from barbarity to civility and virtue. If it be objected that this art--or rather, from the divine origin of its inspiration, this more than art--has ever been made the excuse for the enticing expression of obscenity and blasphemy, Webbe has three answers. In the first place, poetry is to be moralized, that is, to be read allegorically. The _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, for example, will become, when so understood, a fount of ethical teaching; and Harington, a few years later, actually explains in detail the allegorical significance of the fourth book of that poem.[448] This was a well-established tradition, and indeed a favorite occupation, of the Middle Ages; and the _Ovide Moralise_, a long poem by Chretien Le Gouais, written about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the equally long Ovidian commentary of Pierre Bercuire, are typical examples of this practice.[449] In the second place, the picture of vices to be found in poetry is intended, not to entice the reader to imitate them, but rather to deter sensible men from doing likewise by showing the misfortune that inevitably results from evil. Moreover, obscenity is in no way essentially connected with poetic art; it is to the abuse of poetry, and not to poetry itself, that we must lay all blame for this fault.