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+Project Gutenberg Etext A Defence of Poesie and Poems, by Sidney
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+A Defence of Poesie and Poems
+
+by Philip Sidney
+
+November, 1999  [Etext #1962]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext A Defence of Poesie and Poems, by Sidney
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition.
+
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+
+
+
+A DEFENCE OF POESIE AND POEMS
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Introduction by Henry Morley
+A Defence of Poesie
+Poems
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+
+Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst, in Kent, on the 29th of
+November, 1554.  His father, Sir Henry Sidney, had married Mary,
+eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and Philip
+was the eldest of their family of three sons and four daughters.
+Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh were of like age with Philip
+Sidney, differing only by about a year, and when Elizabeth became
+queen, on the 17th of November, 1558, they were children of four or
+five years old.
+
+In the year 1560 Sir Henry Sidney was made Lord President of Wales,
+representing the Queen in Wales and the four adjacent western
+counties, as a Lord Deputy represented her in Ireland.  The official
+residence of the Lord President was at Ludlow Castle, to which
+Philip Sidney went with his family when a child of six.  In the same
+year his father was installed as a Knight of the Garter.  When in
+his tenth year Philip Sidney was sent from Ludlow to Shrewsbury
+Grammar School, where he studied for three or four years, and had
+among his schoolfellows Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, who
+remained until the end of Sidney's life one of his closest friends.
+When he himself was dying he directed that he should be described
+upon his tomb as "Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth,
+counsellor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney."  Even
+Dr. Thomas Thornton, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, under whom
+Sidney was placed when he was entered to Christ Church in his
+fourteenth year, at Midsummer, in 1568, had it afterwards recorded
+on his tomb that he was "the tutor of Sir Philip Sidney."
+
+Sidney was in his eighteenth year in May, 1572, when he left the
+University to continue his training for the service of the state, by
+travel on the Continent.  Licensed to travel with horses for himself
+and three servants, Philip Sidney left London in the train of the
+Earl of Lincoln, who was going out as ambassador to Charles IX., in
+Paris.  He was in Paris on the 24th of August in that year, which
+was the day of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.  He was sheltered
+from the dangers of that day in the house of the English Ambassador,
+Sir Francis Walsingham, whose daughter Fanny Sidney married twelve
+years afterwards.
+
+From Paris Sidney travelled on by way of Heidelberg to Frankfort,
+where he lodged at a printer's, and found a warm friend in Hubert
+Languet, whose letters to him have been published.  Sidney was
+eighteen and Languet fifty-five, a French Huguenot, learned and
+zealous for the Protestant cause, who had been Professor of Civil
+Law in Padua, and who was acting as secret minister for the Elector
+of Saxony when he first knew Sidney, and saw in him a future
+statesman whose character and genius would give him weight in the
+counsels of England, and make him a main hope of the Protestant
+cause in Europe.  Sidney travelled on with Hubert Languet from
+Frankfort to Vienna, visited Hungary, then passed to Italy, making
+for eight weeks Venice his head-quarters, and then giving six weeks
+to Padua.  He returned through Germany to England, and was in
+attendance it the Court of Queen Elizabeth in July, 1575.  Next
+month his father was sent to Ireland as Lord Deputy, and Sidney
+lived in London with his mother.
+
+At this time the opposition of the Mayor and Corporation of the City
+of London to the acting of plays by servants of Sidney's uncle, the
+Earl of Leicester, who had obtained a patent for them, obliged the
+actors to cease from hiring rooms or inn yards in the City, and
+build themselves a house of their own a little way outside one of
+the City gates, and wholly outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction.
+Thus the first theatre came to be built in England in the year 1576.
+Shakespeare was then but twelve years old, and it was ten years
+later that he came to London.
+
+In February, 1577, Philip Sidney, not yet twenty-three years old,
+was sent on a formal embassy of congratulation to Rudolph II. upon
+his becoming Emperor of Germany, but under the duties of the formal
+embassy was the charge of watching for opportunities of helping
+forward a Protestant League among the princes of Germany.  On his
+way home through the Netherlands he was to convey Queen Elizabeth's
+congratulations to William of Orange on the birth of his first
+child, and what impression he made upon that leader of men is shown
+by a message William sent afterwards through Fulke Greville to Queen
+Elizabeth.  He said "that if he could judge, her Majesty had one of
+the ripest and greatest counsellors of State in Philip Sidney that
+then lived in Europe; to the trial of which he was pleased to leave
+his own credit engaged until her Majesty was pleased to employ this
+gentleman, either amongst her friends or enemies."
+
+Sidney returned from his embassy in June, 1577.  At the time of his
+departure, in the preceding February, his sister Mary, then twenty
+years old, had become the third wife of Henry Herbert, Earl of
+Pembroke, and her new home as Countess of Pembroke was in the great
+house at Wilton, about three miles from Salisbury.  She had a
+measure of her brother's genius, and was of like noble strain.
+Spenser described her as
+
+
+"The gentlest shepherdess that lives this day,
+And most resembling, both in shape and spright,
+Her brother dear."
+
+
+Ben Jonson, long after her brother had passed from earth, wrote upon
+her death the well-known epitaph:-
+
+
+"Underneath this sable herse
+Lies the subject of all verse,
+Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
+Death, ere thou hast slain another,
+Learn'd, and fair, and good as she,
+Time shall throw a dart at thee."
+
+
+Sidney's sister became Pembroke's mother in 1580, while her brother
+Philip was staying with her at Wilton.  He had early in the year
+written a long argument to the Queen against the project of her
+marriage with the Duke of Anjou, which she then found it politic to
+seem to favour.  She liked Sidney well, but resented, or appeared to
+resent, his intrusion of advice; he also was discontented with what
+seemed to be her policy, and he withdrew from Court for a time.
+That time of seclusion, after the end of March, 1580, he spent with
+his sister at Wilton.  They versified psalms together; and he began
+to write for her amusement when she had her baby first upon her
+hands, his romance of "Arcadia."  It was never finished.  Much was
+written at Wilton in the summer of 1580, the rest in 1581, written,
+as he said in a letter to her, "only for you, only to you . . . for
+severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, triflingly handled.
+Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose
+sheets of paper, most of it in your presence, the rest by sheets
+sent unto you as fast as they were done."  He never meant that it
+should be published; indeed, when dying he asked that it should be
+destroyed; but it belonged to a sister who prized the lightest word
+of his, and after his death it was published in 1590 as "The
+Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia."
+
+The book reprinted in this volume was written in 1581, while sheets
+of the "Arcadia" were still being sent to Wilton.  But it differs
+wholly in style from the "Arcadia."  Sidney's "Arcadia" has literary
+interest as the first important example of the union of pastoral
+with heroic romance, out of which came presently, in France, a
+distinct school of fiction.  But the genius of its author was at
+play, it followed designedly the fashions of the hour in verse and
+prose, which tended to extravagance of ingenuity.  The "Defence of
+Poesy" has higher interest as the first important piece of literary
+criticism in our literature.  Here Sidney was in earnest.  His style
+is wholly free from the euphuistic extravagance in which readers of
+his time delighted:  it is clear, direct, and manly; not the less,
+but the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected simplicity.
+As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still
+less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with
+indirect suggestion of the critic himself as the one owl in a world
+of mice.  Philip Sidney's care is towards the end of good
+literature.  He looks for highest aims, and finds them in true work,
+and hears God's angel in the poet's song.
+
+The writing of this piece was probably suggested to him by the fact
+that an earnest young student, Stephen Gosson, who came from his
+university about the time when the first theatres were built, and
+wrote plays, was turned by the bias of his mind into agreement with
+the Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly
+from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579
+transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them,
+in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a
+Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such
+like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance
+to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by
+Profane Writers, Natural Reason, and Common Experience:  a Discourse
+as pleasant for Gentlemen that favour Learning as profitable for all
+that will follow Virtue."  This Discourse Gosson dedicated "To the
+right noble Gentleman, Master Philip Sidney, Esquire."  Sidney
+himself wrote verse, he was companion with the poets, and counted
+Edmund Spenser among his friends.  Gosson's pamphlet was only one
+expression of the narrow form of Puritan opinion that had been
+misled into attacks on poetry and music as feeders of idle appetite
+that withdrew men from the life of duty.  To show the fallacy in
+such opinion, Philip Sidney wrote in 1581 this piece, which was
+first printed in 1595, nine years after his death, as a separate
+publication, entitled "An Apologie for Poetrie."  Three years
+afterwards it was added, with other pieces, to the third edition of
+his "Arcadia," and then entitled "The Defence of Poesie."  In
+sixteen subsequent editions it continued to appear as "The Defence
+of Poesie."  The same title was used in the separate editions of
+1752 and 1810.  Professor Edward Arber re-issued in 1869 the text of
+the first edition of 1595, and restored the original title, which
+probably was that given to the piece by its author.  One name is as
+good as the other, but as the word "apology" has somewhat changed
+its sense in current English, it may be well to go on calling the
+work "The Defence of Poesie."
+
+In 1583 Sidney was knighted, and soon afterwards in the same year he
+married Frances, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.  Sonnets
+written by him according to old fashion, and addressed to a lady in
+accordance with a form of courtesy that in the same old fashion had
+always been held to exclude personal suit--personal suit was
+private, and not public--have led to grave misapprehension among
+some critics.  They supposed that he desired marriage with Penelope
+Devereux, who was forced by her family in 1580--then eighteen years
+old--into a hateful marriage with Lord Rich.  It may be enough to
+say that if Philip Sidney had desired her for his wife, he had only
+to ask for her and have her.  Her father, when dying, had desired--
+as any father might--that his daughter might become the wife of
+Philip Sidney.  But this is not the place for a discussion of
+Astrophel and Stella sonnets.
+
+In 1585 Sidney was planning to join Drake it sea in attack on Spain
+in the West Indies.  He was stayed by the Queen.  But when Elizabeth
+declared war on behalf of the Reformed Faith, and sent Leicester
+with an expedition to the Netherlands, Sir Philip Sidney went out,
+in November, 1585, as Governor of Flushing.  His wife joined him
+there.  He fretted at inaction, and made the value of his counsels
+so distinct that his uncle Leicester said after his death that he
+began by "despising his youth for a counsellor, not without bearing
+a hand over him as a forward young man.  Notwithstanding, in a short
+time he saw the sun so risen above his horizon that both he and all
+his stars were glad to fetch light from him."  In May, 1586, Sir
+Philip Sidney received news of the death of his father.  In August
+his mother died.  In September he joined in the investment of
+Zutphen.  On the 22nd of September his thigh-bone was shattered by a
+musket ball from the trenches.  His horse took fright and galloped
+back, but the wounded man held to his seat.  He was then carried to
+his uncle, asked for water, and when it was given, saw a dying
+soldier carried past, who eyed it greedily.  At once he gave the
+water to the soldier, saying, "Thy necessity is yet greater than
+mine."  Sidney lived on, patient in suffering, until the 17th of
+October.  When he was speechless before death, one who stood by
+asked Philip Sidney for a sign of his continued trust in God.  He
+folded his hands as in prayer over his breast, and so they were
+become fixed and chill, when the watchers placed them by his side;
+and in a few minutes the stainless representative of the young
+manhood of Elizabethan England passed away.
+
+
+
+AN APOLOGIE FOR POETRIE
+
+
+
+When the right virtuous Edward Wotton {1} and I were at the
+Emperor's court together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of
+Gio. Pietro Pugliano; one that, with great commendation, had the
+place of an esquire in his stable; and he, according to the
+fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the
+demonstration of his practice, but sought to enrich our minds with
+the contemplation therein, which he thought most precious.  But with
+none, I remember, mine ears were at any time more laden, than when
+(either angered with slow payment, or moved with our learner-like
+admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise of his faculty.
+
+He said, soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen
+the noblest of soldiers.  He said, they were the masters of war and
+ornaments of peace, speedy goers, and strong abiders, triumphers
+both in camps and courts; nay, to so unbelieved a point he
+proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince, as
+to be a good horseman; skill of government was but a "pedanteria" in
+comparison.  Then would he add certain praises by telling what a
+peerless beast the horse was, the only serviceable courtier, without
+flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such
+more, that if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to
+him, I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a
+horse.  But thus much, at least, with his no few words, he drove
+into me, that self love is better than any gilding, to make that
+seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.
+
+Wherein, if Pugliano's strong affection and weak arguments will not
+satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example of myself, who, I know
+not by what mischance, in these my not old years and idlest times,
+having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked to say
+something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation;
+which if I handle with more good will than good reasons, bear with
+me, since the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth the steps of
+his master.
+
+And yet I must say, that as I have more just cause to make a pitiful
+defence of poor poetry, which, from almost the highest estimation of
+learning, is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children; so have I
+need to bring some more available proofs, since the former is by no
+man barred of his deserved credit, whereas the silly latter hath had
+even the names of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with
+great danger of civil war among the Muses. {2}
+
+At first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh
+against poetry, may justly be objected, that they go very near to
+ungratefulness to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations
+and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to
+ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled
+them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges.  And will you play
+the hedgehog, that being received into the den, drove out his host?
+{3} or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their parents?
+{4}
+
+Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show
+me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing
+else but poets.  Nay, let any history he brought that can say any
+writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same
+skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who having been
+the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their
+knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their
+fathers in learning.  For not only in time they had this priority
+(although in itself antiquity be venerable) but went before them as
+causes to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits
+to an admiration of knowledge.  So as Amphion was said to move
+stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened
+to by beasts, indeed, stony and beastly people, so among the Romans
+were Livius Andronicus, and Ennius; so in the Italian language, the
+first that made it to aspire to be a treasure-house of science, were
+the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower
+and Chaucer; after whom, encouraged and delighted with their
+excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother
+tongue, as well in the same kind as other arts.
+
+This {5} did so notably show itself that the philosophers of Greece
+durst not a long time appear to the world but under the mask of
+poets; so Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides sang their natural
+philosophy in verses; so did Pythagoras and Phocylides their moral
+counsels; so did Tyrtaeus in war matters; and Solon in matters of
+policy; or rather they, being poets, did exercise their delightful
+vein in those points of highest knowledge, which before them lay
+hidden to the world; for that wise Solon was directly a poet it is
+manifest, having written in verse the notable fable of the Atlantic
+Island, which was continued by Plato. {6}  And, truly, even Plato,
+whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work,
+though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin, as it
+were, and beauty depended most of poetry.  For all stands upon
+dialogues; wherein he feigns many honest burgesses of Athens
+speaking of such matters that if they had been set on the rack they
+would never have confessed them; besides, his poetical describing
+the circumstances of their meetings, as the well-ordering of a
+banquet, the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tiles, as
+Gyges's Ring, {7} and others; which, who knows not to be flowers of
+poetry, did never walk into Apollo's garden.
+
+And {8} even historiographers, although their lips sound of things
+done, and verity be written in their foreheads, have been glad to
+borrow both fashion and, perchance, weight of the poets; so
+Herodotus entitled the books of his history by the names of the Nine
+Muses; and both he, and all the rest that followed him, either stole
+or usurped, of poetry, their passionate describing of passions, the
+many particularities of battles which no man could affirm; or, if
+that be denied me, long orations, put in the months of great kings
+and captains, which it is certain they never pronounced.
+
+So that, truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer could, at
+the first, have entered into the gates of popular judgments, if they
+had not taken a great disport of poetry; which in all nations, at
+this day, where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen; in
+all which they have some feeling of poetry.  In Turkey, besides
+their lawgiving divines they have no other writers but poets.  In
+our neighbour-country Ireland, where, too, learning goes very bare,
+yet are their poets held in a devout reverence.  Even among the most
+barbarous and simple Indians, where no writing is, yet have they
+their poets who make and sing songs, which they call "Arentos," both
+of their ancestor's deeds and praises of their gods.  A sufficient
+probability, that if ever learning comes among them, it must be by
+having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet
+delight of poetry; for until they find a pleasure in the exercise of
+the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them
+that know not the fruits of knowledge.  In Wales, the true remnant
+of the ancient Britons, as there are good authorities to show the
+long time they had poets, which they called bards, so through all
+the conquests of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, some of whom
+did seek to ruin all memory of learning from among them, yet do
+their poets, even to this day, last; so as it is not more notable in
+the soon beginning than in long-continuing.
+
+But since the authors of most of our sciences were the Romans, and
+before them the Greeks, let us, a little, stand upon their
+authorities; but even so far, as to see what names they have given
+unto this now scorned skill. {9}  Among the Romans a poet was called
+"vates," which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet, as by
+his conjoined words "vaticinium," and "vaticinari," is manifest; so
+heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon this heart-
+ravishing knowledge!  And so far were they carried into the
+admiration thereof, that they thought in the changeable hitting upon
+any such verses, great foretokens of their following fortunes were
+placed.  Whereupon grew the word of sortes Virgilianae; when, by
+sudden opening Virgil's book, they lighted upon some verse, as it is
+reported by many, whereof the histories of the Emperors' lives are
+full.  As of Albinus, the governor of our island, who, in his
+childhood, met with this verse -
+
+
+Arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis
+
+
+and in his age performed it.  Although it were a very vain and
+godless superstition; as also it was, to think spirits were
+commanded by such verses; whereupon this word charms, derived of
+"carmina," cometh, so yet serveth it to show the great reverence
+those wits were held in; and altogether not without ground, since
+both the oracles of Delphi and the Sibyl's prophecies were wholly
+delivered in verses; for that same exquisite observing of number and
+measure in the words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper
+to the poet, did seem to have some divine force in it.
+
+And {10} may not I presume a little farther to show the
+reasonableness of this word "vates," and say, that the holy David's
+Psalms are a divine poem?  If I do, I shall not do it without the
+testimony of great learned men, both ancient and modern.  But even
+the name of Psalms will speak for me, which, being interpreted, is
+nothing but Songs; then, that is fully written in metre, as all
+learned Hebricians agree, although the rules be not yet fully found.
+Lastly, and principally, his handling his prophecy, which is merely
+poetical.  For what else is the awaking his musical instruments; the
+often and free changing of persons; his notable prosopopoeias, when
+he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty; his
+telling of the beasts' joyfulness, and hills leaping; but a heavenly
+poesy, wherein, almost, he sheweth himself a passionate lover of
+that unspeakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes of
+the mind, only cleared by faith?  But truly, now, having named him,
+I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry,
+which is, among us, thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation.  But
+they that, with quiet judgments, will look a little deeper into it,
+shall find the end and working of it such, as, being rightly
+applied, deserveth not to be scourged out of the church of God.
+
+But {11} now let us see how the Greeks have named it, and how they
+deemed of it.  The Greeks named him [Greek text], which name hath,
+as the most excellent, gone through other languages; it cometh of
+this word [Greek text], which is TO MAKE; wherein, I know not
+whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in
+calling him "a maker," which name, how high and incomparable a title
+it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other
+sciences, than by any partial allegation.  There is no art delivered
+unto mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal
+object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so
+depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature
+will have set forth. {12}  So doth the astronomer look upon the
+stars, and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken
+therein.  So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their
+diverse sorts of quantities.  So doth the musician, in times, tell
+you which by nature agree, which not.  The natural philosopher
+thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the
+natural virtues, vices, or passions of man; and follow nature, saith
+he, therein, and thou shalt not err.  The lawyer saith what men have
+determined.  The historian, what men have done.  The grammarian
+speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and
+logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and
+persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed
+within the circle of a question, according to the proposed matter.
+The physician weigheth the nature of man's body, and the nature of
+things helpful and hurtful unto it.  And the metaphysic, though it
+be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be counted
+supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature.
+Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted
+up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into
+another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth
+forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature, as the
+heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as
+he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow
+warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his
+own wit. {13}   Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry
+as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful
+trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-
+much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only
+deliver a golden.
+
+But let those things alone, and go to man; {14} for whom as the
+other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is
+employed; and know, whether she have brought forth so true a lover
+as Theagenes; so constant a friend as Pylades; so valiant a man as
+Orlando; so right a prince as Xenophon's Cyrus; and so excellent a
+man every way as Virgil's AEneas?  Neither let this be jestingly
+conceived, because the works of the one be essential, the other in
+imitation or fiction; for every understanding knoweth the skill of
+each artificer standeth in that idea, or fore-conceit of the work,
+and not in the work itself.  And that the poet hath that idea is
+manifest by delivering them forth in such excellency as he had
+imagined them; which delivering forth, also, is not wholly
+imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in the
+air; but so far substantially it worketh not only to make a Cyrus,
+which had been but a particular excellency, as nature might have
+done; but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses; if
+they will learn aright, why, and how, that maker made him.  Neither
+let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the highest point
+of man's wit with the efficacy of nature; but rather give right
+honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker, who having made man to
+His own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that
+second nature; which in nothing he showeth so much as in poetry;
+when, with the force of a divine breath, he bringeth things forth
+surpassing her doings, with no small arguments to the incredulous of
+that first accursed fall of Adam; since our erected wit maketh us
+know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from
+reaching unto it.  But these arguments will by few be understood,
+and by fewer granted; thus much I hope will be given me, that the
+Greeks, with some probability of reason, gave him the name above all
+names of learning.
+
+Now {15} let us go to a more ordinary opening of him, that the truth
+may be the more palpable; and so, I hope, though we get not so
+unmatched a praise as the etymology of his names will grant, yet his
+very description, which no man will deny, shall not justly be barred
+from a principal commendation.
+
+Poesy, {16} therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle
+termeth it in the word [Greek text]; that is to say, a representing,
+counterfeiting, or figuring forth:  to speak metaphorically, a
+speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.
+
+Of {17} this have been three general kinds:  the CHIEF, both in
+antiquity and excellency, which they that did imitate the
+inconceivable excellencies of God; such were David in the Psalms;
+Solomon in the Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs;
+Moses and Deborah in their hymns; and the writer of Job; which,
+beside others, the learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. Junius do
+entitle the poetical part of the scripture; against these none will
+speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy reverence.  In this kind,
+though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his
+hymns, and many others, both Greeks and Romans.  And this poesy must
+be used by whosoever will follow St. Paul's counsel, in singing
+psalms when they are merry; and I know is used with the fruit of
+comfort by some, when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing
+sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.
+
+The {18} SECOND kind is of them that deal with matter philosophical;
+either moral, as Tyrtaeus, Phocylides, Cato, or, natural, as
+Lucretius, Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius {19} and
+Pontanus; or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is
+in their judgment, quite out of taste, and not in the sweet food of
+sweetly uttered knowledge.
+
+But because this second sort is wrapped within the fold of the
+proposed subject, and takes not the free course of his own
+invention; whether they properly be poets or no, let grammarians
+dispute, and go to the THIRD, {20} indeed right poets, of whom
+chiefly this question ariseth; betwixt whom and these second is such
+a kind of difference, as betwixt the meaner sort of painters, who
+counterfeit only such faces as are set before them; and the more
+excellent, who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon
+you which is fittest for the eye to see; as the constant, though
+lamenting look of Lucretia, when she punished in herself another's
+fault; wherein he painteth not Lucretia, whom he never saw, but
+painteth the outward beauty of such a virtue.  For these three be
+they which most properly do imitate to teach and delight; and to
+imitate, borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be; but
+range only, reined with learned discretion, into the divine
+consideration of what may be, and should be.  These be they, that,
+as the first and most noble sort, may justly be termed "vates;" so
+these are waited on in the excellentest languages and best
+understandings, with the fore-described name of poets.  For these,
+indeed, do merely make to imitate, and imitate both to delight and
+teach, and delight to move men to take that goodness in hand, which,
+without delight they would fly as from a stranger; and teach to make
+them know that goodness whereunto they are moved; which being the
+noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet want
+there not idle tongues to bark at them.
+
+These {21} be subdivided into sundry more special denominations; the
+most notable be the heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, satyric, iambic,
+elegiac, pastoral, and certain others; some of these being termed
+according to the matter they deal with; some by the sort of verse
+they like best to write in; for, indeed, the greatest part of poets
+have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of
+writing which is called verse.  Indeed, but apparelied verse, being
+but an ornament, and no cause to poetry, since there have been many
+most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many
+versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. {22}  For
+Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem
+justi imperii, the portraiture of a just of Cyrus, as Cicero saith
+of him, made therein an absolute heroical poem.  So did Heliodorus,
+{23} in his sugared invention of Theagenes and Chariclea; and yet
+both these wrote in prose; which I speak to show, that it is not
+rhyming and versing that maketh a poet (no more than a long gown
+maketh an advocate, who, though he pleaded in armour should be an
+advocate and no soldier); but it is that feigning notable images of
+virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which
+must be the right describing note to know a poet by.  Although,
+indeed, the senate of poets have chosen verse as their fittest
+raiment; meaning, as in matter they passed all in all, so in manner
+to go beyond them; not speaking table-talk fashion, or like men in a
+dream, words as they changeably fall from the mouth, but piecing
+each syllable of each word by just proportion, according to the
+dignity of the subject.
+
+Now, {24} therefore, it shall not be amiss, first, to weight this
+latter sort of poetry by his WORKS, and then by his PARTS; and if in
+neither of these anatomies he be commendable, I hope we shall
+receive a more favourable sentence.  This purifying of wit, this
+enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit,
+which commonly we call learning under what name soever it come
+forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed; the final end
+is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate
+souls, made worse by, their clay lodgings, {25} can be capable of.
+This, according to the inclination of man, bred many formed
+impressions; for some that thought this felicity principally to be
+gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high or heavenly as
+to be acquainted with the stars, gave themselves to astronomy;
+others, persuading themselves to be demi-gods, if they knew the
+causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers.
+Some an admirable delight drew to music, and some the certainty of
+demonstrations to the mathematics; but all, one and other, having
+this scope to know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the
+dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence.  But
+when, by the balance of experience, it was found that the
+astronomer, looking to the stars, might fall in a ditch; that the
+enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the
+mathematician might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart;
+then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make manifest that
+all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private
+end in themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end
+of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called [Greek text], which
+stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self; in the ethic
+and politic consideration, with the end of well doing, and not of
+well knowing only; even as the saddler's next end is to make a good
+saddle, but his farther end to serve a nobler faculty, which is
+horsemanship; so the horseman's to soldiery; and the soldier not
+only to have the skill, but to perform the practice of a soldier.
+So that the ending end of all earthly learning being virtuous
+action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that have a most
+just title to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show
+it rightly, the poet is worthy to have it before any other
+competitors. {26}
+
+Among {27} whom principally to challenge it, step forth the moral
+philosophers; whom, methinks, I see coming toward me with a sullen
+gravity (as though they could not abide vice by daylight), rudely
+clothed, for to witness outwardly their contempt of outward things,
+with books in their hands against glory, whereto they set their
+names; sophistically speaking against subtlety, and angry with any
+man in whom they see the foul fault of anger.  These men, casting
+largesses as they go, of definitions, divisions, and distinctions,
+with a scornful interrogative do soberly ask:  Whether it be
+possible to find any path so ready to lead a man to virtue, as that
+which teacheth what virtue is; and teacheth it not only by
+delivering forth his very being, his causes and effects; but also by
+making known his enemy, vice, which must be destroyed; and his
+cumbersome servant, passion, which must be mastered, by showing the
+generalities that contain it, and the specialities that are derived
+from it; lastly, by plain setting down how it extends itself out of
+the limits of a man's own little world, to the government of
+families, and maintaining of public societies?
+
+The historian {28} scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to say so
+much, but that he (laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing
+{29} himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose
+greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of
+hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick
+truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago
+than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world
+goes than how his own wit runs; curious for antiquities, and
+inquisitive of novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant in
+table-talk) denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of
+virtue and virtuous actions, is comparable to him.  I am "Testis
+temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuncia
+vetustatis." {30}  The philosopher, saith he, teacheth a disputative
+virtue, but I do an active; his virtue is excellent in the
+dangerless academy of Plato, but mine showeth forth her honourable
+face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poictiers, and
+Agincourt:  he teacheth virtue by certain abstract considerations;
+but I only bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before
+you:  old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-witted philosopher;
+but I give the experience of many ages.  Lastly, if he make the song
+book, I put the learner's hand to the lute; and if he be the guide,
+I am the light.  Then would he allege you innumerable examples,
+confirming story by stories, how much the wisest senators and
+princes have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus,
+Alphonsus of Aragon (and who not? if need be).  At length, the long
+line of their disputation makes a point in this, that the one giveth
+the precept, and the other the example.
+
+Now {31} whom shall we find, since the question standeth for the
+highest form in the school of learning, to be moderator?  Truly, as
+me seemeth, the poet; and if not a moderator, even the man that
+ought to carry the title from them both, and much more from all
+other serving sciences.  Therefore compare we the poet with the
+historian, and with the moral philosopher; and if he go beyond them
+both, no other human skill can match him; for as for the Divine,
+with all reverence, he is ever to be excepted, not only for having
+his scope as far beyond any of these, as eternity exceedeth a
+moment, but even for passing each of these in themselves; and for
+the lawyer, though "Jus" be the daughter of Justice, the chief of
+virtues, yet because he seeks to make men good rather "formidine
+poenae" than "virtutis amore," or, to say righter, doth not
+endeavour to make men good, but that their evil hurt not others,
+having no care, so he be a good citizen, how bad a man he be:
+therefore, as our wickedness maketh him necessary, and necessity
+maketh him honourable, so is he not in the deepest truth to stand in
+rank with these, who all endeavour to take naughtiness away, and
+plant goodness even in the secretest cabinet of our souls.  And
+these four are all that any way deal in the consideration of men's
+manners, which being the supreme knowledge, they that best breed it
+deserve the best commendation.
+
+The philosopher, therefore, and the historian are they which would
+win the goal, the one by precept, the other by example; but both,
+not having both, do both halt.  For the philosopher, setting down
+with thorny arguments the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so
+misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him
+shall wade in him until he be old, before he shall find sufficient
+cause to be honest.  For his knowledge standeth so upon the abstract
+and general, that happy is that man who may understand him, and more
+happy that can apply what he doth understand.  On the other side the
+historian, wanting the precept, is so tied, not to what should be,
+but to what is; to the particular truth of things, and not to the
+general reason of things; that his example draweth no necessary
+consequence, and therefore a less fruitful doctrine.
+
+Now {32} doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatsoever the
+philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture of it,
+by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done, so as he coupleth
+the general notion with the particular example.  A perfect picture,
+I say; for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that
+whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which
+doth neither strike, pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so
+much as that other doth.  For as, in outward things, to a man that
+had never seen an elephant, or a rhinoceros, who should tell him
+most exquisitely all their shape, colour, bigness, and particular
+marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the
+full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it
+were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward
+conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge;
+but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted,
+or that house well in model, should straightway grow, without need
+of any description, to a judicial comprehending of them; so, no
+doubt, the philosopher, with his learned definitions, be it of
+virtue or vices, matters of public policy or private government,
+replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom,
+which, notwithstanding, lie dark before the imaginative and judging
+power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking
+picture of poesy.
+
+Tully taketh much pains, and many times not without poetical help,
+to make us know the force love of our country hath in us.  Let us
+but hear old Anchises, speaking in the midst of Troy's flames, or
+see Ulysses, in the fulness of all Calypso's delights, bewail his
+absence from barren and beggarly Ithaca.  Anger, the Stoics said,
+was a short madness; let but Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage,
+killing or whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the army of
+Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and Menelaus; and tell me,
+if you have not a more familiar insight into anger, than finding in
+the schoolmen his genus and difference?  See whether wisdom and
+temperance in Ulysses and Diomedes, valour in Achilles, friendship
+in Nisus and Euryalus, even to an ignorant man, carry not an
+apparent shining; and, contrarily, the remorse of conscience in
+OEdipus; the soon-repenting pride in Agamemnon; the self-devouring
+cruelty in his father Atreus; the violence of ambition in the two
+Theban brothers; the sour sweetness of revenge in Medea; and, to
+fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho, and our Chaucer's Pandar, so
+expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades; and
+finally, all virtues, vices, and passions so in their own natural
+states laid to the view, that we seem not to hear of them, but
+clearly to see through them?
+
+But even in the most excellent determination of goodness, what
+philosopher's counsel can so readily direct a prince as the feigned
+Cyrus in Xenophon?  Or a virtuous man in all fortunes, as AEneas in
+Virgil?  Or a whole commonwealth, as the way of Sir Thomas More's
+Utopia?  I say the way, because where Sir Thomas More erred, it was
+the fault of the man, and not of the poet; for that way of
+patterning a commonwealth was most absolute, though he, perchance,
+hath not so absolutely performed it.  For the question is, whether
+the feigned image of poetry, or the regular instruction of
+philosophy, hath the more force in teaching.  Wherein, if the
+philosophers have more rightly showed themselves philosophers, than
+the poets have attained to the high top of their profession, (as in
+truth,
+
+
+"Mediocribus esse poetis
+Non Di, non homines, non concessere columnae," {33})
+
+
+it is, I say again, not the fault of the art, but that by few men
+that art can be accomplished.  Certainly, even our Saviour Christ
+could as well have given the moral common-places {34} of
+uncharitableness and humbleness, as the divine narration of Dives
+and Lazarus; or of disobedience and mercy, as the heavenly discourse
+of the lost child and the gracious father; but that his thorough
+searching wisdom knew the estate of Dives burning in hell, and of
+Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, would more constantly, as it were,
+inhabit both the memory and judgment.  Truly, for myself (me seems),
+I see before mine eyes the lost child's disdainful prodigality
+turned to envy a swine's dinner; which, by the learned divines, are
+thought not historical acts, but instructing parables.
+
+For conclusion, I say the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth
+obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to
+say, he teacheth them that are already taught.  But the poet is the
+food for the tenderest stomachs; the poet is, indeed, the right
+popular philosopher.  Whereof AEsop's tales give good proof; whose
+pretty allegories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, make
+many, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue
+from those dumb speakers.
+
+But now may it be alleged, that if this managing of matters be so
+fit for the imagination, then must the historian needs surpass, who
+brings you images of true matters, such as, indeed, were done, and
+not such as fantastically or falsely may be suggested to have been
+done.  Truly, Aristotle himself, in his Discourse of Poesy, plainly
+determineth this question, saying, that poetry is [Greek text], that
+is to say, it is more philosophical and more ingenious than history.
+His reason is, because poesy dealeth with [Greek text], that is to
+say, with the universal consideration, and the history [Greek text],
+the particular.  "Now," saith he, "the universal weighs what is fit
+to be said or done, either in likelihood or necessity; which the
+poesy considereth in his imposed names; and the particular only
+marks, whether Alcibiades did, or suffered, this or that:" thus far
+Aristotle. {35}  Which reason of his, as all his, is most full of
+reason.  For, indeed, if the question were, whether it were better
+to have a particular act truly or falsely set down? there is no
+doubt which is to be chosen, no more than whether you had rather
+have Vespasian's picture right as he was, or, at the painter's
+pleasure, nothing resembling?  But if the question be, for your own
+use and learning, whether it be better to have it set down as it
+should be, or as it was? then, certainly, is more doctrinable the
+feigned Cyrus in Xenophon, than the true Cyrus in Justin; {36} and
+the feigned AEneas in Virgil, than the right AEneas in Dares
+Phrygius; {37} as to a lady that desired to fashion her countenance
+to the best grace, a painter should more benefit her, to portrait a
+most sweet face, writing Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as
+she was, who, Horace sweareth, was full ill-favoured.  If the poet
+do his part aright, he will show you in Tantalus, Atreus, and such
+like, nothing that is not to be shunned; in Cyrus, AEneas, Ulysses,
+each thing to be followed; where the historian, bound to tell things
+as things were, cannot be liberal, without he will be poetical, of a
+perfect pattern; but, as in Alexander, or Scipio himself, show
+doings, some to be liked, some to be misliked; and then how will you
+discern what to follow, but by your own discretion, which you had,
+without reading Q. Curtius? {38}  And whereas, a man may say, though
+in universal consideration of doctrine, the poet prevaileth, yet
+that the history, in his saying such a thing was done, doth warrant
+a man more in that he shall follow; the answer is manifest:  that if
+he stand upon that WAS, as if he should argue, because it rained
+yesterday therefore it should rain to-day; then, indeed, hath it
+some advantage to a gross conceit.  But if he know an example only
+enforms a conjectured likelihood, and so go by reason, the poet doth
+so far exceed him, as he is to frame his example to that which is
+most reasonable, be it in warlike, politic, or private matters;
+where the historian in his bare WAS hath many times that which we
+call fortune to overrule the best wisdom.  Many times he must tell
+events whereof he can yield no cause; or if he do, it must be
+poetically.
+
+For, that a feigned example bath as much force to teach as a true
+example (for as for to move, it is clear, since the feigned may be
+tuned to the highest key of passion), let us take one example
+wherein an historian and a poet did concur.  Herodotus and Justin do
+both testify, that Zopyrus, King Darius's faithful servant, seeing
+his master long resisted by the rebellious Babylonians, feigned
+himself in extreme disgrace of his King; for verifying of which he
+caused his own nose and ears to be cut off, and so flying to the
+Babylonians, was received; and, for his known valour, so far
+credited, that he did find means to deliver them over to Darius.
+Much-like matters doth Livy record of Tarquinius and his son.
+Xenophon excellently feigned such another stratagem, performed by
+Abradatus in Cyrus's behalf.  Now would I fain know, if occasion be
+presented unto you to serve your prince by such an honest
+dissimulation, why do you not as well learn it of Xenophon's fiction
+as of the other's verity? and, truly, so much the better, as you
+shall save your nose by the bargain; for Abradatus did not
+counterfeit so far.  So, then, the best of the historians is subject
+to the poet; for, whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel,
+policy, or war stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may
+the poet, if he list, with his imitation, make his own, beautifying
+it both for farther teaching, and more delighting, as it please him:
+having all, from Dante's heaven to his hell, under the authority of
+his pen.  Which if I be asked, What poets have done so? as I might
+well name some, so yet, say I, and say again, I speak of the art,
+and not of the artificer.
+
+Now, to that which commonly is attributed to the praise of history,
+in respect of the notable learning which is got by marking the
+success, as though therein a man should see virtue exalted, and vice
+punished:  truly, that commendation is peculiar to poetry, and far
+off from history; for, indeed, poetry ever sets virtue so out in her
+best colours, making fortune her well-waiting handmaid, that one
+must needs be enamoured of her.  Well may you see Ulysses in a
+storm, and in other hard plights; but they are but exercises of
+patience and magnanimity, to make them shine the more in the near
+following prosperity.  And, on the contrary part, if evil men come
+to the stage, they ever go out (as the tragedy writer answered to
+one that misliked the show of such persons) so manacled, as they
+little animate folks to follow them.  But history being captive to
+the truth of a foolish world, in many times a terror from well-
+doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness.  For see we not
+valiant Miltiades rot in his fetters? the just Phocion and the
+accomplished Socrates put to death like traitors? the cruel Severus
+live prosperously? the excellent Severus miserably murdered?  Sylla
+and Marius dying in their beds?  Pompey and Cicero slain then when
+they would have thought exile a happiness?  See we not virtuous Cato
+driven to kill himself, and rebel Caesar so advanced, that his name
+yet, after sixteen hundred years, lasteth in the highest honour?
+And mark but even Caesar's own words of the forenamed Sylla, (who in
+that only did honestly, to put down his dishonest tyranny), "literas
+nescivit:" as if want of learning caused him to do well.  He meant
+it not by poetry, which, not content with earthly plagues, deviseth
+new punishment in hell for tyrants:  nor yet by philosophy, which
+teacheth "occidentes esse:" but, no doubt, by skill in history; for
+that, indeed, can afford you Cypselus, Periander, Phalaris,
+Dionysius, and I know not how many more of the same kennel, that
+speed well enough in their abominable injustice of usurpation.
+
+I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth history, not only in
+furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it forward to
+that which deserves to be called and accounted good:  which setting
+forward, and moving to well-doing, indeed, setteth the laurel crowns
+upon the poets as victorious; not only of the historian, but over
+the philosopher, howsoever, in teaching, it may be questionable.
+For suppose it be granted, that which I suppose, with great reason,
+may be denied, that the philosopher, in respect of his methodical
+proceeding, teach more perfectly than the poet, yet do I think, that
+no man is so much [Greek text], as to compare the philosopher in
+moving with the poet.  And that moving is of a higher degree than
+teaching, it may by this appear, that it is well nigh both the cause
+and effect of teaching; for who will be taught, if he be not moved
+with desire to be taught?  And what so much good doth that teaching
+bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one
+to do that which it doth teach.  For, as Aristotle saith, it is not
+[Greek text] but [Greek text] {39} must be the fruit:  and how
+[Greek text] can be, without being moved to practise, it is no hard
+matter to consider.  The philosopher showeth you the way, he
+informeth you of the particularities, as well of the tediousness of
+the way and of the pleasant lodging you shall have when your journey
+is ended, as of the many by-turnings that may divert you from your
+way; but this is to no man, but to him that will read him, and read
+him with attentive, studious painfulness; which constant desire
+whosoever hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness of the
+way, and therefore is beholden to the philosopher but for the other
+half.  Nay, truly, learned men have learnedly thought, that where
+once reason hath so much over-mastered passion, as that the mind
+hath a free desire to do well, the inward light each mind hath in
+itself is as good as a philosopher's book:  since in nature we know
+it is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil, although
+not in the words of art which philosophers bestow upon us; for out
+of natural conceit the philosophers drew it; but to be moved to do
+that which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, "hoc opus,
+hic labor est."
+
+Now, {40} therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human and
+according to the human conceit), is our poet the monarch.  For he
+doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the
+way, as will entice any man to enter into it; nay, he doth, as if
+your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first
+give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long
+to pass farther.  He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which
+must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the memory with
+doubtfulness, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful
+proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-
+enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto
+you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from
+the chimney-corner; {41} and, pretending no more, doth intend the
+winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is
+often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding them in such
+other as have a pleasant taste; which, if one should begin to tell
+them the nature of the aloes or rhubarbarum they should receive,
+would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth; so
+it is in men (most of them are childish in the best things, till
+they be cradled in their graves); glad they will be to hear the
+tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, AEneas; and hearing them, must
+needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice;
+which, if they had been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set
+out, they would swear they be brought to school again.  That
+imitation whereof poetry is, hath the most conveniency to nature of
+all other; insomuch that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in
+themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural monsters, are
+made, in poetical imitation, delightful.  Truly, I have known men,
+that even with reading Amadis de Gaule, which, God knoweth, wanteth
+much of a perfect poesy, have found their hearts moved to the
+exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage.  Who
+readeth AEneas carrying old Anchises on his back, that wisheth not
+it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act?  Whom doth not
+those words of Turnus move (the tale of Turnus having planted his
+image in the imagination)
+
+
+"--fugientem haec terra videbit?
+Usque adeone mori miserum est?" {42}
+
+
+Where the philosophers (as they think) scorn to delight, so much
+they be content little to move, saving wrangling whether "virtus" be
+the chief or the only good; whether the contemplative or the active
+life do excel; which Plato and Boetius well knew; and therefore made
+mistress Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy.
+For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school-
+name, and know no other good but "indulgere genio," and therefore
+despise the austere admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the
+inward reason they stand upon; yet will be content to be delighted,
+which is all the good-fellow poet seems to promise; and so steal to
+see the form of goodness, which seen, they cannot but love, ere
+themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine of cherries.
+
+Infinite {43} proofs of the strange effects of this poetical
+invention might be alleged; only two shall serve, which are so often
+remembered, as, I think, all men know them.  The one of Menenius
+Agrippa, who, when the whole people of Rome had resolutely divided
+themselves from the senate, with apparent show of utter ruin, though
+he were, for that time, an excellent orator, came not among them
+upon trust, either of figurative speeches, or cunning insinuations,
+and much less with far-fetched maxims of philosophy, which,
+especially if they were Platonic, they must have learned geometry
+before they could have conceived; but, forsooth, he behaveth himself
+like a homely and familiar poet.  He telleth them a tale, that there
+was a time when all the parts of the body made a mutinous conspiracy
+against the belly, which they thought devoured the fruits of each
+other's labour; they concluded they would let so unprofitable a
+spender starve.  In the end, to be short (for the tale is notorious,
+and as notorious that it was a tale), with punishing the belly they
+plagued themselves.  This, applied by him, wrought such effect in
+the people as I never read that only words brought forth; but then
+so sudden, and so good an alteration, for upon reasonable conditions
+a perfect reconcilement ensued.
+
+The other is of Nathan the prophet, who, when the holy David had so
+far forsaken God, as to confirm adultery with murder, when he was to
+do the tenderest office of a friend, in laying his own shame before
+his eyes, being sent by God to call again so chosen a servant, how
+doth he it? but by telling of a man whose beloved lamb was
+ungratefully taken from his bosom.  The application most divinely
+true, but the discourse itself feigned; which made David (I speak of
+the second and instrumental cause) as in a glass see his own
+filthiness, as that heavenly psalm of mercy well testifieth.
+
+By these, therefore, examples and reasons, I think it may be
+manifest that the poet, with that same hand of delight, doth draw
+the mind more effectually than any other art doth.  And so a
+conclusion not unfitly ensues; that as virtue is the most excellent
+resting-place for all worldly learning to make his end of, so
+poetry, being the most familiar to teach it, and most princely to
+move towards it, in the most excellent work is the most excellent
+workman.
+
+But I am content not only to decipher him by his works (although
+works in commendation and dispraise must ever hold a high
+authority), but more narrowly will examine his parts; so that (as in
+a man) though all together may carry a presence full of majesty and
+beauty perchance in some one defectious {44} piece we may find
+blemish.
+
+Now, {45} in his parts, kinds, or species, as you list to term them,
+it is to be noted that some poesies have coupled together two or
+three kinds; as the tragical and comical, whereupon is risen the
+tragi-comical; some, in the manner, have mingled prose and verse, as
+Sannazaro and Boetius; some have mingled matters heroical and
+pastoral; but that cometh all to one in this question; for, if
+severed they be good, the conjunction cannot be hurtful.  Therefore,
+perchance, forgetting some, and leaving some as needless to be
+remembered, it shall not be amiss, in a word, to cite the special
+kinds, to see what faults may be found in the right use of them.
+
+Is it, then, the pastoral poem which is misliked? {46}  For,
+perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over.
+Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometimes, out of Melibaeus's
+mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords and ravening
+soldiers?  And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to
+them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest?
+Sometimes under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, can include
+the whole considerations of wrong doing and patience; sometimes
+show, that contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory;
+where, perchance, a man may see that even Alexander and Darius, when
+they strove who should be cock of this world's dunghill, the benefit
+they got was, that the after-livers may say,
+
+
+"Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsim.
+Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tempore nobis." {47}
+
+
+Or is it the lamenting elegiac, {48} which, in a kind heart, would
+move rather pity than blame; who bewaileth, with the great
+philosopher Heraclitus, the weakness of mankind, and the
+wretchedness of the world; who, surely, is to be praised, either for
+compassionately accompanying just causes of lamentations, or for
+rightly pointing out how weak be the passions of wofulness?
+
+Is it the bitter, but wholesome iambic, {49} who rubs the galled
+mind, making shame the trumpet of villany, with bold and open crying
+out against naughtiness?
+
+Or the satiric? who,
+
+
+"Omne vafer vitium ridenti tangit amico;" {50}
+
+
+who sportingly never leaveth, until he make a man laugh at folly,
+and, at length, ashamed to laugh at himself, which he cannot avoid
+without avoiding the folly; who, while "circum praecordia ludit,"
+giveth us to feel how many headaches a passionate life bringeth us
+to; who when all is done,
+
+
+"Est Ulubris, animus si nos non deficit aequus." {51}
+
+
+No, perchance, it is the comic; {52} whom naughty play-makers and
+stage-keepers have justly made odious.  To the arguments of abuse I
+will after answer; only thus much now is to be said, that the comedy
+is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which he
+representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be;
+so as it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a
+one.  Now, as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the
+right, and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even; so in the
+actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth a
+great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue.  This doth the comedy
+handle so, in our private and domestical matters, as, with hearing
+it, we get, as it were, an experience of what is to be looked for,
+of a niggardly Demea, of a crafty Davus, of a flattering Gnatho, of
+a vain-glorious Thraso; and not only to know what effects are to be
+expected, but to know who be such, by the signifying badge given
+them by the comedian.  And little reason hath any man to say, that
+men learn the evil by seeing it so set out; since, as I said before,
+there is no man living, but by the force truth hath in nature, no
+sooner seeth these men play their parts, but wisheth them in
+"pistrinum;" {53} although, perchance, the sack of his own faults
+lie so behind his back, that he seeth not himself to dance in the
+same measure, whereto yet nothing can more open his eyes than to see
+his own actions contemptibly set forth; so that the right use of
+comedy will, I think, by nobody be blamed.
+
+And much less of the high and excellent tragedy, {54} that openeth
+the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered
+with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants, and tyrants to
+manifest their tyrannical humours; that with stirring the effects of
+admiration and commiseration, teacheth the uncertainty of this
+world, and upon how weak foundations gilded roofs are builded; that
+maketh us know, "qui sceptra saevos duro imperio regit, timet
+timentes, metus in authorem redit."  But how much it can move,
+Plutarch yielded a notable testimony of the abominable tyrant
+Alexander Pheraeus; from whose eyes a tragedy, well made and
+represented, drew abundance of tears, who without all pity had
+murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood; so as he that
+was not ashamed to make matters for tragedies, yet could not resist
+the sweet violence of a tragedy.  And if it wrought no farther good
+in him, it was that he, in despite of himself, withdrew himself from
+hearkening to that which might mollify his hardened heart.  But it
+is not the tragedy they do dislike, for it were too absurd to cast
+out so excellent a representation of whatsoever is most worthy to be
+learned.
+
+Is it the lyric that most displeaseth, who with his tuned lyre and
+well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to
+virtuous acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who
+sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in
+singing the lauds of the immortal God?  Certainly, I must confess
+mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and
+Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet;
+{55} and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher
+voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust
+and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the
+gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?  In Hungary I have seen it the manner
+at all feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of
+their ancestors' valour, which that right soldier-like nation think
+one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage.  The incomparable
+Lacedaemonians did not only carry that kind of music ever with them
+to the field, but even at home, as such songs were made, so were
+they all content to be singers of them; when the lusty men were to
+tell what they did, the old men what they had done, and the young
+what they would do.  And where a man may say that Pindar many times
+praiseth highly victories of small moment, rather matters of sport
+than virtue; as it may be answered, it was the fault of the poet,
+and not of the poetry, so, indeed, the chief fault was in the time
+and custom of the Greeks, who set those toys at so high a price,
+that Philip of Macedon reckoned a horse-race won at Olympus among
+three fearful felicities.  But as the inimitable Pindar often did,
+so is that kind most capable, and most fit, to awake the thoughts
+from the sleep of idleness, to embrace honourable enterprises.
+
+There rests the heroical, {56} whose very name, I think, should
+daunt all backbiters.  For by what conceit can a tongue be directed
+to speak evil of that which draweth with him no less champions than
+Achilles, Cyrus, AEneas, Turus, Tydeus, Rinaldo? who doth not only
+teach and move to truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high
+and excellent truth:  who maketh magnanimity and justice shine
+through all misty fearfulness and foggy desires? who, if the saying
+of Plato and Tully be true, that who could see virtue, would be
+wonderfully ravished with the love of her beauty; this man setteth
+her out to make her more lovely, in her holiday apparel, to the eye
+of any that will deign not to disdain until they understand.  But if
+any thing be already said in the defence of sweet poetry, all
+concurreth to the maintaining the heroical, which is not only a
+kind, but the best and most accomplished kind, of poetry.  For, as
+the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the
+lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to
+be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy.  Only let
+AEneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how he governeth
+himself in the ruin of his country; in the preserving his old
+father, and carrying away his religious ceremonies; in obeying God's
+commandments, to leave Dido, though not only passionate kindness,
+but even the human consideration of virtuous gratefulness, would
+have craved other of him; how in storms, how in sports, how in war,
+how in peace, how a fugitive, how victorious, how besieged, how
+besieging, how to strangers, how to allies, how to enemies; how to
+his own, lastly, how in his inward self, and how in his outward
+government; and I think, in a mind most prejudiced with a
+prejudicating humour, he will be found in excellency fruitful.  Yea,
+as Horace saith, "Melius Chrysippo et Crantore:" {57} but, truly, I
+imagine it falleth out with these poet-whippers as with some good
+women who often are sick, but in faith they cannot tell where.  So
+the name of poetry is odious to them, but neither his cause nor
+effects, neither the sum that contains him, nor the particularities
+descending from him, give any fast handle to their carping
+dispraise.
+
+Since, then, {58} poetry is of all human learnings the most ancient,
+and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have
+taken their beginnings; since it is so universal that no learned
+nation doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it; since
+both Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of
+prophesying, the other of making, and that indeed that name of
+making is fit for him, considering, that where all other arts retain
+themselves within their subject, and receive, as it were, their
+being from it, the poet only, only bringeth his own stuff, and doth
+not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh matter for a
+conceit; since neither his description nor end containeth any evil,
+the thing described cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as
+to teach goodness, and delight the learners of it; since therein
+(namely, in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges) he doth not
+only far pass the historian, but, for instructing, is well nigh
+comparable to the philosopher; for moving, leaveth him behind him;
+since the Holy Scripture (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath
+whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ
+vouchsafed to use the flowers of it; since all his kinds are not
+only in their united forms, but in their severed dissections fully
+commendable; I think, and think I think rightly, the laurel crown
+appointed for triumphant captains, doth worthily, of all other
+learnings, honour the poet's triumph.
+
+But {59} because we have ears as well as tongues, and that the
+lightest reasons that may be, will seem to weigh greatly, if nothing
+be put in the counterbalance, let us hear, and, as well as we can,
+ponder what objections be made against this art, which may be worthy
+either of yielding or answering.
+
+First, truly, I note, not only in these [Greek text], poet-haters,
+but in all that kind of people who seek a praise by dispraising
+others, that they do prodigally spend a great many wandering words
+in quips and scoffs, carping and taunting at each thing, which, by
+stirring the spleen, may stay the brain from a thorough beholding,
+the worthiness of the subject.  Those kind of objections, as they
+are full of a very idle uneasiness (since there is nothing of so
+sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon
+it), so deserve they no other answer, but, instead of laughing at
+the jest, to laugh at the jester.  We know a playing wit can praise
+the discretion of an ass, the comfortableness of being in debt, and
+the jolly commodities of being sick of the plague; so, of the
+contrary side, if we will turn Ovid's verse,
+
+
+"Ut lateat virtus proximitate mali."
+
+
+"That good lies hid in nearness of the evil," Agrippa will be as
+merry in the showing the Vanity of Science, as Erasmus was in the
+commending of Folly; {60} neither shall any man or matter escape
+some touch of these smiling railers.  But for Erasmus and Agrippa,
+they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise.
+Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb
+before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge
+before they confirm their own; I would have them only remember, that
+scoffing cometh not of wisdom; so as the best title in true English
+they get with their merriments, is to be called good fools; for so
+have our grave forefathers ever termed that humorous kind of
+jesters.
+
+But that which giveth greatest scope to their scorning humour, is
+rhyming and versing. {61}  It is already said, and, as I think,
+truly said, it is not rhyming and versing that maketh poesy; one may
+be a poet without versing, and a versifier without poetry.  But yet,
+presuppose it were inseparable, as indeed, it seemeth Scaliger
+judgeth truly, it were an inseparable commendation; for if "oratio"
+next to "ratio," speech next to reason, be the greatest gift
+bestowed upon mortality, that cannot be praiseless which doth most
+polish that blessing of speech; which considereth each word, not
+only as a man may say by his forcible quality, but by his best
+measured quantity; carrying even in themselves a harmony; without,
+perchance, number, measure, order, proportion be in our time grown
+odious.
+
+But lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only fit speech
+for music--music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses; thus
+much is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish without
+remembering, memory being the only treasure of knowledge, those
+words which are fittest for memory, are likewise most convenient for
+knowledge.  Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up
+of the memory, the reason is manifest:  the words, besides their
+delight, which hath a great affinity to memory, being so set as one
+cannot be lost, but the whole work fails:  which accusing itself,
+calleth the remembrance back to itself, and so most strongly
+confirmeth it.  Besides, one word so, as it were, begetting another,
+as, be it in rhyme or measured verse, by the former a man shall have
+a near guess to the follower.  Lastly, even they that have taught
+the art of memory, have showed nothing so apt for it as a certain
+room divided into many places, well and thoroughly known; now that
+hath the verse in effect perfectly, every word having his natural
+seat, which seat must needs make the word remembered.  But what
+needs more in a thing so known to all men?  Who is it that ever was
+a scholar that doth not carry away some verses of Virgil, Horace, or
+Cato, which in his youth he learned, and even to his old age serve
+him for hourly lessons? as,
+
+
+"Percontatorem fugito:  nam garrulus idem est.
+Dum sibi quisque placet credula turba sumus." {62}
+
+
+But the fitness it hath for memory is notably proved by all delivery
+of arts, wherein, for the most part, from grammar to logic,
+mathematics, physic, and the rest, the rules chiefly necessary to be
+borne away are compiled in verses.  So that verse being in itself
+sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the only handle of
+knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak against it.
+
+Now {63} then go we to the most important imputations laid to the
+poor poets; for aught I can yet learn, they are these.
+
+First, that there being many other more fruitful knowledges, a man
+might better spend his time in them than in this.
+
+Secondly, that it is the mother of lies.
+
+Thirdly, that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many
+pestilent desires, with a syren sweetness, drawing the mind to the
+serpent's tail of sinful fancies; and herein, especially, comedies
+give the largest field to ear, as Chaucer saith; how, both in other
+nations and ours, before poets did soften us, we were full of
+courage, given to martial exercises, the pillars of manlike liberty,
+and not lulled asleep in shady idleness with poets' pastimes.
+
+And lastly and chiefly, they cry out with open mouth, as if they had
+overshot Robin Hood, that Plato banished them out of his
+commonwealth.  Truly this is much, if there be much truth in it.
+
+First, {64} to the first, that a man might better spend his time, is
+a reason indeed; but it doth, as they say, but "petere principium."
+{65}  For if it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as that
+which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that none can both teach
+and move thereto so much as poesy, then is the conclusion manifest,
+that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed.
+And certainly, though a man should grant their first assumption, it
+should follow, methinks, very unwillingly, that good is not good
+because better is better.  But I still and utterly deny that there
+is sprung out of earth a more fruitful knowledge.
+
+To {66} the second, therefore, that they should be the principal
+liars, I answer paradoxically, but truly, I think truly, that of all
+writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar; and though he
+would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar.  The astronomer, with his
+cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them
+to measure the height of the stars.  How often, think you, do the
+physicians lie, when they aver things good for sicknesses, which
+afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion
+before they come to his ferry.  And no less of the rest which take
+upon them to affirm.  Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and
+therefore never lieth; for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that
+to be true which is false:  so as the other artists, and especially
+the historian, affirmeth many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge
+of mankind, hardly escape from many lies:  but the poet, as I said
+before, never affirmeth; the poet never maketh any circles about
+your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he
+writeth:  he citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for
+his entry calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good
+invention; in troth, not labouring to tell you what is or is not,
+but what should or should not be.  And, therefore, though he recount
+things not true, yet because he telleth them not for true he lieth
+not; without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, before
+alleged, to David; which, as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think
+I none so simple would say, that AEsop lied in the tales of his
+beasts; for who thinketh that AEsop wrote it for actually true, were
+well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth
+of.  What child is there that cometh to a play, and seeing Thebes
+written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is
+Thebes?  If then a man can arrive to the child's age, to know that
+the poet's persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and
+not stories what have been, they will never give the lie to things
+not affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively written; and
+therefore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away full
+fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, looking but for fiction, they
+shall use the narration but as an imaginative ground-plot of a
+profitable invention.
+
+But hereto is replied, that the poets give names to men they write
+of, which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being
+true, proveth a falsehood.  And doth the lawyer lie then, when,
+under the names of John of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he
+putteth his case?  But that is easily answered, their naming of men
+is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any
+history.  Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless; we see we
+cannot play at chess but that we must give names to our chess-men:
+and yet, methinks, he were a very partial champion of truth that
+would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a
+bishop.  The poet nameth Cyrus and AEneas no other way than to show
+what men of their fames, fortunes, and estates should do.
+
+Their {67} third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, training it to a
+wanton sinfulness and lustful love.  For, indeed, that is the
+principal if not only abuse I can hear alleged.  They say the
+comedies rather teach, than reprehend, amorous conceits; they say
+the lyric is larded with passionate sonnets; the elegiac weeps the
+want of his mistress; and that even to the heroical Cupid hath
+ambitiously climbed.  Alas! Love, I would thou couldst as well
+defend thyself, as thou canst offend others!  I would those on whom
+thou dost attend, could either put thee away or yield good reason
+why they keep thee!  But grant love of beauty to be a beastly fault,
+although it be very hard, since only man, and no beast, hath that
+gift to discern beauty; grant that lovely name of love to deserve
+all hateful reproaches, although even some of my masters the
+philosophers spent a good deal of their lamp-oil in setting forth
+the excellency of it; grant, I say, what they will have granted,
+that not only love, but lust, but vanity, but, if they list,
+scurrility, possess many leaves of the poets' books; yet, think I,
+when this is granted, they will find their sentence may, with good
+manners, put the last words foremost; and not say that poetry
+abuseth man's wit, but that man's wit abuseth poetry.  For I will
+not deny but that man's wit may make poesy, which should be [Greek
+text], which some learned have defined, figuring forth good things,
+to be [Greek text], which doth contrariwise infect the fancy with
+unworthy objects; as the painter, who should give to the eye either
+some excellent perspective, or some fine picture fit for building or
+fortification, or containing in it some notable example, as Abraham
+sacrificing his son Isaac, Judith killing Holofernes, David fighting
+with Goliath, may leave those, and please an ill-pleased eye with
+wanton shows of better-hidden matters.
+
+But, what! shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?
+Nay, truly, though I yield that poesy may not only be abused, but
+that being abused, by the reason of his sweet charming force, it can
+do more hurt than any other army of words, yet shall it be so far
+from concluding, that the abuse shall give reproach to the abused,
+that, contrariwise, it is a good reason, that whatsoever being
+abused, doth most harm, being rightly used (and upon the right use
+each thing receives his title) doth most good.  Do we not see skill
+of physic, the best rampire {68} to our often-assaulted bodies,
+being abused, teach poison, the most violent destroyer?  Doth not
+knowledge of law, whose end is to even and right all things, being
+abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries?  Doth not
+(to go in the highest) God's word abused breed heresy, and His name
+abused become blasphemy?  Truly, a needle cannot do much hurt, and
+as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much good.
+With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou
+mayest defend thy prince and country; so that, as in their calling
+poets fathers of lies, they said nothing, so in this their argument
+of abuse, they prove the commendation.
+
+They allege herewith, that before poets began to be in price, our
+nation had set their heart's delight upon action, and not
+imagination; rather doing things worthy to be written, than writing
+things fit to be done.  What that before time was, I think scarcely
+Sphynx can tell; since no memory is so ancient that gives not the
+precedence to poetry.  And certain it is, that, in our plainest
+homeliness, yet never was the Albion nation without poetry.  Marry,
+this argument, though it be levelled against poetry, yet it is
+indeed a chain-shot against all learning or bookishness, as they
+commonly term it.  Of such mind were certain Goths, of whom it is
+written, that having in the spoil of a famous city taken a fair
+library, one hangman, belike fit to execute the fruits of their
+wits, who had murdered a great number of bodies, would have set fire
+in it.  "No," said another, very gravely, "take heed what you do,
+for while they are busy about those toys, we shall with more leisure
+conquer their countries."  This, indeed, is the ordinary doctrine of
+ignorance, and many words sometimes I have heard spent in it; but
+because this reason is generally against all learning as well as
+poetry, or rather all learning but poetry; because it were too large
+a digression to handle it, or at least too superfluous, since it is
+manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge,
+and knowledge best by gathering many knowledges, which is reading,;
+I only say with Horace, to him that is of that opinion,
+
+
+"Jubeo stultum esse libenter--" {69}
+
+
+for as for poetry itself, it is the freest from this, objection, for
+poetry is the companion of camps.  I dare undertake, Orlando
+Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will never displease a soldier:  but
+the quiddity of "ens" and "prima materia" will hardly agree with a
+corslet.  And, therefore, as I said in the beginning, even Turks and
+Tartars are delighted with poets.  Homer, a Greek, flourished before
+Greece flourished; and if to a slight conjecture a conjecture may be
+opposed, truly it may seem, that as by him their learned men took
+almost their first light of knowledge, so their active men receive
+their first notions of courage.  Only Alexander's example may serve,
+who by Plutarch is accounted of such virtue that fortune was not his
+guide but his footstool; whose acts speak for him, though Plutarch
+did not; indeed, the phoenix of warlike princes.  This Alexander
+left his schoolmaster, living Aristotle, behind him, but took dead
+Homer with him.  He put the philosopher Callisthenes to death, for
+his seeming philosophical, indeed mutinous, stubbornness; but the
+chief thing he was ever heard to wish for was that Homer had been
+alive.  He well found he received more bravery of mind by the
+pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude.
+And, therefore, if Cato misliked Fulvius for carrying Ennius with
+him to the field, it may be answered that if Cato misliked it the
+noble Fulvius liked it, or else he had not done it; for it was not
+the excellent Cato Uticensis whose authority I would much more have
+reverenced, but it was the former, in truth a bitter punisher of
+faults, but else a man that had never sacrificed to the Graces.  He
+misliked, and cried out against, all Greek learning, and yet, being
+fourscore years old, began to learn it, belike fearing that Pluto
+understood not Latin.  Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no person to
+be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers' roll.  And,
+therefore, though Cato misliked his unmustered person, he misliked
+not his work.  And if he had, Scipio Nasica (judged by common
+consent the best Roman) loved him:  both the other Scipio brothers,
+who had by their virtues no less surnames than of Asia and Afric, so
+loved him that they caused his body to be buried in their sepulture.
+So, as Cato's authority being but against his person, and that
+answered with so far greater than himself, is herein of no validity.
+
+But {70} now, indeed, my burthen is great, that Plato's name is laid
+upon me, whom, I must confess, of all philosophers I have ever
+esteemed most worthy of reverence; and with good reason, since of
+all philosophers he is the most poetical; yet if he will defile the
+fountain out of which his flowing streams have proceeded, let us
+boldly examine with what reason he did it.
+
+First, truly, a man might maliciously object that Plato, being a
+philosopher, was a natural enemy of poets.  For, indeed, after the
+philosophers had picked out of the sweet mysteries of poetry the
+right discerning of true points of knowledge, they forthwith,
+putting it in method, and making a school of art of that which the
+poets did only teach by a divine delightfulness, beginning to spurn
+at their guides, like ungrateful apprentices, were not content to
+set up shop for themselves, but sought by all means to discredit
+their masters; which, by the force of delight being barred them, the
+less they could overthrow them, the more they hated them.  For,
+indeed, they found for Homer seven cities strove who should have him
+for their citizen, where many cities banished philosophers as not
+fit members to live among them.  For only repeating certain of
+Euripides' verses many Athenians had their lives saved of the
+Syracusans, where the Athenians themselves thought many of the
+philosophers unworthy to live.  Certain poets, as Simonides and
+Pindar, had so prevailed with Hiero the First, that of a tyrant they
+made him a just king; where Plato could do so little with Dionysius
+that he himself, of a philosopher, was made a slave.  But who should
+do thus, I confess, should requite the objections raised against
+poets with like cavillations against philosophers; as likewise one
+should do that should bid one read Phaedrus or Symposium in Plato,
+or the discourse of Love in Plutarch, and see whether any poet do
+authorise abominable filthiness as they do.
+
+Again, a man might ask, out of what Commonwealth Plato doth banish
+them?  In sooth, thence where he himself alloweth community of
+women.  So, as belike this banishment grew not for effeminate
+wantonness, since little should poetical sonnets be hurtful, when a
+man might have what woman he listed.  But I honour philosophical
+instructions, and bless the wits which bred them, so as they be not
+abused, which is likewise stretched to poetry.  Saint Paul himself
+sets a watchword upon philosophy, indeed upon the abuse.  So doth
+Plato upon the abuse, not upon poetry.  Plato found fault that the
+poets of his time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods,
+making light tales of that unspotted essence, and therefore would
+not have the youth depraved with such opinions.  Herein may much be
+said; let this suffice:  the poets did not induce such opinions, but
+did imitate those opinions already induced.  For all the Greek
+stories can well testify that the very religion of that time stood
+upon many and many-fashioned gods; not taught so by poets, but
+followed according to their nature of imitation.  Who list may read
+in Plutarch the discourses of Isis and Osiris, of the cause why
+oracles ceased, of the Divine providence, and see whether the
+theology of that nation stood not upon such dreams, which the poets
+indeed superstitiously observed; and truly, since they had not the
+light of Christ, did much better in it than the philosophers, who,
+shaking off superstition, brought in atheism.
+
+Plato, therefore, whose authority I had much rather justly construe
+than unjustly resist, meant not in general of poets, in those words
+of which Julius Scaliger saith, "qua authoritate, barbari quidam
+atque insipidi, abuti velint ad poetas e republica exigendos {71}:"
+but only meant to drive out those wrong opinions of the Deity,
+whereof now, without farther law, Christianity hath taken away all
+the hurtful belief, perchance as he thought nourished by then
+esteemed poets.  And a man need go no farther than to Plato himself
+to know his meaning; who, in his dialogue called "Ion," {72} giveth
+high, and rightly, divine commendation unto poetry.  So as Plato,
+banishing the abuse, not the thing, not banishing it, but giving due
+honour to it, shall be our patron, and not our adversary.  For,
+indeed, I had much rather, since truly I may do it, show their
+mistaking of Plato, under whose lion's skin they would make an ass-
+like braying against poesy, than go about to overthrow his
+authority; whom, the wiser a man is, the more just cause he shall
+find to have in admiration; especially since he attributeth unto
+poesy more than myself do, namely, to be a very inspiring of a
+divine force, far above man's wit, as in the fore-named dialogue is
+apparent.
+
+Of the other side, who would show the honours have been by the best
+sort of judgments granted them, a whole sea of examples would
+present themselves; Alexanders, Caesars, Scipios, all favourers of
+poets; Laelius, called the Roman Socrates, himself a poet; so as
+part of Heautontimeroumenos, in Terence, was supposed to be made by
+him.  And even the Greek Socrates, whom Apollo confirmed to be the
+only wise man, is said to have spent part of his old time in putting
+AEsop's Fables into verse; and, therefore, full evil should it
+become his scholar Plato to put such words in his master's mouth
+against poets. But what needs more?  Aristotle writes the "Art of
+Poesy;" and why, if it should not be written?  Plutarch teacheth the
+use to be gathered of them; and how, if they should not be read?
+And who reads Plutarch's either history or philosophy, shall find he
+trimmeth both their garments with guards {73} of poesy.
+
+But I list not to defend poesy with the help of his underling
+historiographer.  Let it suffice to have showed it is a fit soil for
+praise to dwell upon; and what dispraise may be set upon it is
+either easily overcome, or transformed into just commendation.  So
+that since the excellences of it may be so easily and so justly
+confirmed, and the low creeping objections so soon trodden down
+{74}; it not being an art of lies, but of true doctrine; not of
+effeminateness, but of notable stirring of courage; not of abusing
+man's wit, but of strengthening man's wit; not banished, but
+honoured by Plato; let us rather plant more laurels for to ingarland
+the poets' heads (which honour of being laureate, as besides them
+only triumphant captains were, is a sufficient authority to show the
+price they ought to be held in) than suffer the ill-favoured breath
+of such wrong speakers once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy.
+
+But {75} since I have run so long a career in this matter, methinks,
+before I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but a little more lost
+time to inquire, why England, the mother of excellent minds, should
+be grown so hard a step-mother to poets, who certainly in wit ought
+to pass all others, since all only proceeds from their wit, being,
+indeed, makers of themselves, not takers of others.  How can I but
+exclaim,
+
+
+"Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso?" {76}
+
+
+Sweet poesy! that hath anciently had kings, emperors, senators,
+great captains, such as, besides a thousand others, David, Adrian,
+Sophocles, Germanicus, not only to favour poets, but to be poets;
+and of our nearer times can present for her patrons, a Robert, King
+of Sicily; the great King Francis of France; King James of Scotland;
+such cardinals as Bembus and Bibiena; such famous preachers and
+teachers as Beza and Melancthon; so learned philosophers as
+Fracastorius and Scaliger; so great orators as Pontanus and Muretus;
+so piercing wits as George Buchanan; so grave councillors as,
+besides many, but before all, that Hospital {77} of France, than
+whom, I think, that realm never brought forth a more accomplished
+judgment more firmly builded upon virtue; I say these, with numbers
+of others, not only to read others' poesies, but to poetise for
+others' reading:  that poesy, thus embraced in all other places,
+should only find in our time a hard welcome in England, I think the
+very earth laments it, and therefore decks our soil with fewer
+laurels than it was accustomed.  For heretofore poets have in
+England also flourished; and, which is to be noted, even in those
+times when the trumpet of Mars did sound loudest.  And now that an
+over-faint quietness should seem to strew the house for poets, they
+are almost in as good reputation as the mountebanks at Venice.
+Truly, even that, as of the one side it giveth great praise to
+poesy, which, like Venus (but to better purpose), had rather be
+troubled in the net with Mars, than enjoy the homely quiet of
+Vulcan; so serveth it for a piece of a reason why they are less
+grateful to idle England, which now can scarce endure the pain of a
+pen.  Upon this necessarily followeth that base men with servile
+wits undertake it, who think it enough if they can be rewarded of
+the printer; and so as Epaminondas is said, with the honour of his
+virtue, to have made an office by his exercising it, which before
+was contemptible, to become highly respected; so these men, no more
+but setting their names to it, by their own disgracefulness,
+disgrace the most graceful poesy.  For now, as if all the Muses were
+got with child, to bring forth bastard poets, without any
+commission, they do post over the banks of Helicon, until they make
+their readers more weary than post-horses; while, in the meantime,
+they,
+
+
+"Queis meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan," {78}
+
+
+are better content to suppress the outflowings of their wit, than by
+publishing them to be accounted knights of the same order.
+
+But I that, before ever I durst aspire unto the dignity, am admitted
+into the company of the paper-blurrers, do find the very true cause
+of our wanting estimation is want of desert, taking upon us to be
+poets in despite of Pallas.  Now, wherein we want desert, were a
+thankworthy labour to express.  But if I knew, I should have mended
+myself; but as I never desired the title so have I neglected the
+means to come by it; only, overmastered by some thoughts, I yielded
+an inky tribute unto them.  Marry, they that delight in poesy
+itself, should seek to know what they do, and how they do,
+especially look themselves in an unflattering glass of reason, if
+they be inclinable unto it.
+
+For poesy must not be drawn by the ears, it must be gently led, or
+rather it must lead; which was partly the cause that made the
+ancient learned affirm it was a divine, and no human skill, since
+all other knowledges lie ready for any that have strength of wit; a
+poet no industry can make, if his own genius be not carried into it.
+And therefore is an old proverb, "Orator fit, poeta nascitur." {79}
+Yet confess I always, that as the fertilest ground must be manured,
+so must the highest flying wit have a Daedalus to guide him.  That
+Daedalus, they say, both in this and in other, hath three wings to
+bear itself up into the air of due commendation; that is art,
+imitation, and exercise.  But these, neither artificial rules, nor
+imitative patterns, we much cumber ourselves withal.  Exercise,
+indeed, we do, but that very forebackwardly; for where we should
+exercise to know, we exercise as having known; and so is our brain
+delivered of much matter which never was begotten by knowledge.  For
+there being two principal parts, matter to be expressed by words,
+and words to express the matter, in neither we use art or imitation
+rightly.  Our matter is "quodlibet," {80} indeed, although wrongly,
+performing Ovid's verse,
+
+
+"Quicquid conabor dicere, versus erit;" {81}
+
+
+never marshalling it into any assured rank, that almost the readers
+cannot tell where to find themselves.
+
+Chaucer, undoubtedly, did excellently in his Troilus and Cressida;
+of whom, truly, I know not whether to marvel more, either that he in
+that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age
+go so stumblingly after him.  Yet had he great wants, fit to be
+forgiven in so reverend antiquity.  I account the Mirror of
+Magistrates meetly furnished of beautiful parts.  And in the Earl of
+Surrey's Lyrics, many things tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of
+a noble mind.  The "Shepherds' Kalendar" hath much poesy in his
+eclogues, indeed, worthy the reading, if I be not deceived.  That
+same framing of his {82} style to an old rustic language, I dare not
+allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor
+Sannazaro in Italian, did affect it.  Besides these, I do not
+remember to have seen but few (to speak boldly) printed that have
+poetical sinews in them.  For proof whereof, let but most of the
+verses be put in prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be
+found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the
+first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of
+words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with
+reason.
+
+Our {83} tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are cried out
+against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful
+poetry.  Excepting Gorboduc (again I say of those that I have seen),
+which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches, and well-
+sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as
+full of notable morality, which it does most delightfully teach, and
+so obtain the very end of poesy; yet, in truth, it is very
+defectuous in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might
+not remain as an exact model of all tragedies.  For it is faulty
+both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal
+actions.  For where the stage should always represent but one place;
+and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by
+Aristotle's precept, and common reason, but one day; there is both
+many days and many places inartificially imagined.
+
+But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest? where
+you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so
+many other under kingdoms, that the player, when he comes in, must
+ever begin with telling where he is, {84} or else the tale will not
+be conceived.  Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather
+flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden.  By and
+by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to
+blame if we accept it not for a rock.  Upon the back of that comes
+out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable
+beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime,
+two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and
+then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
+
+Now of time they are much more liberal; for ordinary it is, that two
+young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with
+child; delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth
+in love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two
+hours' space; which, how absurd it is in sense, even sense may
+imagine; and art hath taught and all ancient examples justified, and
+at this day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in.  Yet will
+some bring in an example of the Eunuch in Terence, that containeth
+matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years.  True it is, and
+so was it to be played in two days, and so fitted to the time it set
+forth.  And though Plautus have in one place done amiss, let us hit
+it with him, and not miss with him.  But they will say, How then
+shall we set forth a story which contains both many places and many
+times?  And do they not know, that a tragedy is tied to the laws of
+poesy, and not of history; not bound to follow the story, but having
+liberty either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history
+to the most tragical convenience?  Again, many things may be told,
+which cannot be showed:  if they know the difference betwixt
+reporting and representing.  As for example, I may speak, though I
+am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description
+of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's
+horse.  And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius,"
+{85} to recount things done in former time, or other place.
+
+Lastly, if they will represent an history, they must not, as Horace
+saith, begin "ab ovo," {86} but they must come to the principal
+point of that one action which they will represent.  By example this
+will be best expressed; I have a story of young Polydorus,
+delivered, for safety's sake, with great riches, by his father
+Priamus to Polymnestor, King of Thrace, in the Trojan war time.  He,
+after some years, hearing of the overthrow of Priamus, for to make
+the treasure his own, murdereth the child; the body of the child is
+taken up; Hecuba, she, the same day, findeth a sleight to be
+revenged most cruelly of the tyrant.  Where, now, would one of our
+tragedy-writers begin, but with the delivery of the child?  Then
+should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many
+years, and travel numbers of places.  But where doth Euripides?
+Even with the finding of the body; leaving the rest to be told by
+the spirit of Polydorus.  This needs no farther to be enlarged; the
+dullest wit may conceive it.
+
+But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither
+right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not
+because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head
+and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither
+decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and
+commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel
+tragi-comedy obtained.  I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is
+a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment:
+and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies
+as Plautus hath Amphytrio.  But, if we mark them well, we shall
+find, that they never, or very daintily, match horn-pipes and
+funerals.  So falleth it out, that having indeed no right comedy in
+that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility,
+unworthy of any chaste ears; or some extreme show of doltishness,
+indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the
+whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight; as the tragedy
+should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.
+
+But our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which
+is very wrong; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh
+it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of
+laughter; but well may one thing breed both together.  Nay, in
+themselves, they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety.  For
+delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to
+ourselves, or to the general nature.  Laughter almost ever cometh of
+things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature:  delight hath a
+joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful
+tickling.  For example:  we are ravished with delight to see a fair
+woman, and yet are far from being moved to laughter; we laugh at
+deformed creatures, wherein certainly we cannot delight; we delight
+in good chances; we laugh at mischances; we delight to hear the
+happiness of our friends and country, at which he were worthy to be
+laughed at that would laugh:  we shall, contrarily, sometimes laugh
+to find a matter quite mistaken, and go down the hill against the
+bias, {87} in the mouth of some such men, as for the respect of
+them, one shall be heartily sorrow he cannot choose but laugh, and
+so is rather pained than delighted with laughter.  Yet deny I not,
+but that they may go well together; for, as in Alexander's picture
+well set out, we delight without laughter, and in twenty mad antics
+we laugh without delight:  so in Hercules, painted with his great
+beard and furious countenance, in a woman's attire, spinning at
+Omphale's commandment, it breeds both delight and laughter; for the
+representing of so strange a power in love procures delight, and the
+scornfulness of the action stirreth laughter.
+
+But I speak to this purpose, that all the end of the comical part be
+not upon such scornful matters as stir laughter only, but mix with
+it that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy.  And the
+great fault, even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly
+by Aristotle, is, that they stir laughter in sinful things, which
+are rather execrable than ridiculous; or in miserable, which are
+rather to be pitied than scorned.  For what is it to make folks gape
+at a wretched beggar, and a beggarly clown; or against the law of
+hospitality, to jest at strangers, because they speak not English so
+well as we do? what do we learn, since it is certain,
+
+
+"Nil habet infelix pauperatas durius in se,
+Quam qnod ridiculos, homines facit." {88}
+
+
+But rather a busy loving courtier, and a heartless threatening
+Thraso; a self-wise seeming school-master; a wry-transformed
+traveller:  these, if we saw walk in stage names, which we play
+naturally, therein were delightful laughter, and teaching
+delightfulness:  as in the other, the tragedies of Buchanan {89} do
+justly bring forth a divine admiration.
+
+But I have lavished out too many words of this play matter; I do it,
+because, as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so
+much used in England, and none can be more pitifully abused; which,
+like an unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her
+mother Poesy's honesty to be called in question.
+
+Other {90} sorts of poetry, almost, have we none, but that lyrical
+kind of songs and sonnets, which, if the Lord gave us so good minds,
+how well it might be employed, and with how heavenly fruits, both
+private and public, in singing the praises of the immortal beauty,
+the immortal goodness of that God, who giveth us hands to write, and
+wits to conceive; of which we might well want words, but never
+matter; of which we could turn our eyes to nothing, but we should
+ever have new budding occasions.
+
+But, truly, many of such writings as come under the banner of
+unresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me
+they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches, as men that
+had rather read lover's writings, and so caught up certain swelling
+phrases, which hang together like a man that once told me, "the wind
+was at north-west and by south," because he would be sure to name
+winds enough; than that, in truth, they feel those passions, which
+easily, as I think, may be bewrayed by the same forcibleness, or
+"energia" (as the Greeks call it), of the writer.  But let this be a
+sufficient, though short note, that we miss the right use of the
+material point of poesy.
+
+Now {91} for the outside of it, which is words, or (as I may term
+it) diction, it is even well worse; so is that honey-flowing matron
+eloquence, apparelled, or rather disguised, in a courtesan-like
+painted affectation.  One time with so far-fetched words, that many
+seem monsters, but most seem strangers to any poor Englishman:
+another time with coursing of a letter, as if they were bound to
+follow the method of a dictionary:  another time with figures and
+flowers, extremely winter-starved.
+
+But I would this fault were only peculiar to versifiers, and had not
+as large possession among prose printers:  and, which is to be
+marvelled, among many scholars, and, which is to be pitied, among
+some preachers.  Truly, I could wish (if at least I might be so bold
+to wish, in a thing beyond the reach of my capacity) the diligent
+imitators of Tully and Demosthenes, most worthy to be imitated, did
+not so much keep Nizolian paper-books {92} of their figures and
+phrases, as by attentive translation, as it were, devour them whole,
+and make them wholly theirs.  For now they cast sugar and spice upon
+every dish that is served at the table:  like those Indians, not
+content to wear ear-rings at the fit and natural place of the ears,
+but they will thrust jewels through their nose and lips, because
+they will be sure to be fine.
+
+Tully, when he was to drive out Catiline, as it were with a
+thunderbolt of eloquence, often useth the figure of repetition, as
+"vivit et vincit, imo in senatum venit, imo in senatum venit," &c.
+{93}  Indeed, inflamed with a well-grounded rage, he would have his
+words, as it were, double out of his mouth; and so do that
+artificially which we see men in choler do naturally.  And we,
+having noted the grace of those words, hale them in sometimes to a
+familiar epistle, when it were too much choler to be choleric.
+
+How well, store of "similiter cadences" doth sound with the gravity
+of the pulpit, I would but invoke Demosthenes' soul to tell, who
+with a rare daintiness useth them.  Truly, they have made me think
+of the sophister, that with too much subtlety would prove two eggs
+three, and though he may be counted a sophister, had none for his
+labour.  So these men bringing in such a kind of eloquence, well may
+they obtain an opinion of a seeming fineness, but persuade few,
+which should be the end of their fineness.
+
+Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses, I think all
+herbalists, all stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes are rifled up,
+that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our conceits,
+which certainly is as absurd a surfeit to the ears as is possible.
+For the force of a similitude not being to prove anything to a
+contrary disputer, but only to explain to a willing hearer:  when
+that is done, the rest is a most tedious prattling, rather
+overswaying the memory from the purpose whereto they were applied,
+than any whit informing the judgment, already either satisfied, or
+by similitudes not to be satisfied.
+
+For my part, I do not doubt, when Antonius and Crassus, the great
+forefathers of Cicero in eloquence; the one (as Cicero testifieth of
+them) pretended not to know art, the other not to set by it, because
+with a plain sensibleness they might win credit of popular ears,
+which credit is the nearest step to persuasion (which persuasion is
+the chief mark of oratory); I do not doubt, I say, but that they
+used these knacks very sparingly; which who doth generally use, any
+man may see, doth dance to his own music; and so to he noted by the
+audience, more careful to speak curiously than truly.  Undoubtedly
+(at least to my opinion undoubtedly) I have found in divers small-
+learned courtiers a more sound style than in some professors of
+learning; of which I can guess no other cause, but that the courtier
+following that which by practice he findeth fittest to nature,
+therein (though he know it not) doth according to art, though not by
+art:  where the other, using art to show art, and not hide art (as
+in these cases he should do), flieth from nature, and indeed abuseth
+art.
+
+But what! methinks I deserve to be pounded {94} for straying from
+poetry to oratory:  but both have such an affinity in the wordish
+considerations, that I think this digression will make my meaning
+receive the fuller understanding:  which is not to take upon me to
+teach poets how they should do, but only finding myself sick among
+the rest, to allow sonic one or two spots of the common infection
+grown among the most part of writers; that, acknowledging ourselves
+somewhat awry, we may bend to the right use both of matter and
+manner:  whereto our language giveth us great occasion, being,
+indeed, capable of any excellent exercising of it. {95}  I know some
+will say, it is a mingled language:  and why not so much the better,
+taking the best of both the other?  Another will say, it wanteth
+grammar.  Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wants not
+grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs it not; being so easy
+in itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases,
+genders, moods, and tenses; which, I think, was a piece of the tower
+of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his
+mother tongue.  But for the uttering sweetly and properly the
+conceit of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath it
+equally with any other tongue in the world, and is particularly
+happy in compositions of two or three words together, near the
+Greek, far beyond the Latin; which is one of the greatest beauties
+can be in a language.
+
+Now, {96} of versifying there are two sorts, the one ancient, the
+other modern; the ancient marked the quantity of each syllable, and
+according to that framed his verse; the modern, observing only
+number, with some regard of the accent, the chief life of it
+standeth in that like sounding of the words, which we call rhyme.
+Whether of these be the more excellent, would bear many speeches;
+the ancient, no doubt more fit for music, both words and time
+observing quantity; and more fit lively to express divers passions,
+by the low or lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable.  The latter,
+likewise, with his rhyme striketh a certain music to the ear; and,
+in fine, since it doth delight, though by another way, it obtaineth
+the same purpose; there being in either, sweetness, and wanting in
+neither, majesty.  Truly the English, before any vulgar language I
+know, is fit for both sorts; for, for the ancient, the Italian is so
+full of vowels, that it must ever be cumbered with elisions.  The
+Dutch so, of the other side, with consonants, that they cannot yield
+the sweet sliding fit for a verse.  The French, in his whole
+language, hath not one word that hath his accent in the last
+syllable, saving two, called antepenultima; and little more, hath
+the Spanish, and therefore very gracelessly may they use dactiles.
+The English is subject to none of these defects.
+
+Now for rhyme, though we do not observe quantity, we observe the
+accent very precisely, which other languages either cannot do, or
+will not do so absolutely.  That "caesura," or breathing-place, in
+the midst of the verse, neither Italian nor Spanish have, the French
+and we never almost fail of.  Lastly, even the very rhyme itself the
+Italian cannot put in the last syllable, by the French named the
+masculine rhyme, but still in the next to the last, which the French
+call the female; or the next before that, which the Italian calls
+"sdrucciola:" the example of the former is, "buono," "suono;" of the
+sdrucciola is, "femina," "semina."  The French, of the other side,
+hath both the male, as "bon," "son," and the female, as "plaise,"
+"taise;" but the "sdrucciola" he hath not; where the English hath
+all three, as "due," "true," "father," "rather," "motion," "potion;"
+with much more which might be said, but that already I find the
+trifling of this discourse is much too much enlarged.
+
+So {97} that since the ever praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue,
+breeding delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought to be in the
+noble name of learning; since the blames laid against it are either
+false or feeble; since the cause why it is not esteemed in England
+is the fault of poet-apes, not poets; since, lastly, our tongue is
+most fit to honour poesy, and to be honoured by poesy; I conjure you
+all that have had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of
+mine, even in the name of the Nine Muses, no more to scorn the
+sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as
+though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the
+reverend title of "a rhymer;" but to believe, with Aristotle, that
+they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecian's divinity; to
+believe, with Bembus, that they were the first bringers in of all
+civility; to believe, with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts
+can sooner make you an honest man, than the reading of Virgil; to
+believe, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased
+the heavenly deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to
+give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy natural and
+moral, and "quid non?" to believe, with me, that there are many
+mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose were written darkly,
+lest by profane wits it should be abused; to believe, with Landin,
+that they are so beloved of the gods that whatsoever they write
+proceeds of a divine fury.  Lastly, to believe themselves, when they
+tell you they will make you immortal by their verses.
+
+Thus doing, your names shall flourish in the printers' shops:  thus
+doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface:  thus doing,
+you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all:  you shall
+dwell upon superlatives:  thus doing, though you be "Libertino patre
+natus," you shall suddenly grow "Herculea proles,"
+
+
+"Si quid mea Carmina possunt:"
+
+
+thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or
+Virgil's Anchisis.
+
+But if (fie of such a but!) you be born so near the dull-making
+cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of
+poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift
+itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain
+rustical disdain, will become such a Mome, as to be a Momus of
+poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of
+Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang
+himself; nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in
+Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all
+poets; that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour,
+for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die
+from the earth for want of an epitaph.
+
+
+
+
+POEMS
+
+
+
+
+POEM:  TWO PASTORALS
+
+
+
+Made by Sir Philip Sidney, upon his meeting with his two worthy
+friends and fellow poets, Sir Edward Dyer and M. Fulke Greville.
+
+Join mates in mirth to me,
+Grant pleasure to our meeting;
+Let Pan, our good god, see
+How grateful is our greeting.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Ye hymns and singing skill
+Of god Apollo's giving,
+Be pressed our reeds to fill
+With sound of music living.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Sweet Orpheus' harp, whose sound
+The stedfast mountains moved,
+Let there thy skill abound,
+To join sweet friends beloved.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+My two and I be met,
+A happy blessed trinity,
+As three more jointly set
+In firmest band of unity.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Welcome my two to me,
+The number best beloved,
+Within my heart you be
+In friendship unremoved.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Give leave your flocks to range,
+Let us the while be playing;
+Within the elmy grange,
+Your flocks will not be straying.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Cause all the mirth you can,
+Since I am now come hither,
+Who never joy, but when
+I am with you together.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Like lovers do their love,
+So joy I in you seeing:
+Let nothing me remove
+From always with you being.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+And as the turtle dove
+To mate with whom he liveth,
+Such comfort fervent love
+Of you to my heart giveth.
+Join hearts and hands, so let it be,
+Make but one mind in bodies three.
+
+Now joined be our hands,
+Let them be ne'er asunder,
+But link'd in binding bands
+By metamorphosed wonder.
+So should our severed bodies three
+As one for ever joined be.
+
+
+
+POEM:  DISPRAISE OF A COURTLY LIFE
+
+
+
+Walking in bright Phoebus' blaze,
+Where with heat oppressed I was,
+I got to a shady wood,
+Where green leaves did newly bud;
+And of grass was plenty dwelling,
+Decked with pied flowers sweetly smelling.
+
+In this wood a man I met,
+On lamenting wholly set;
+Ruing change of wonted state,
+Whence he was transformed late,
+Once to shepherds' God retaining,
+Now in servile court remaining.
+
+There he wand'ring malecontent,
+Up and down perplexed went,
+Daring not to tell to me,
+Spake unto a senseless tree,
+One among the rest electing,
+These same words, or this affecting:
+
+"My old mates I grieve to see
+Void of me in field to be,
+Where we once our lovely sheep
+Lovingly like friends did keep;
+Oft each other's friendship proving,
+Never striving, but in loving.
+
+"But may love abiding be
+In poor shepherds' base degree?
+It belongs to such alone
+To whom art of love is known:
+Seely shepherds are not witting
+What in art of love is fitting.
+
+"Nay, what need the art to those
+To whom we our love disclose?
+It is to be used then,
+When we do but flatter men:
+Friendship true, in heart assured,
+Is by Nature's gifts procured.
+
+"Therefore shepherds, wanting skill,
+Can Love's duties best fulfil;
+Since they know not how to feign,
+Nor with love to cloak disdain,
+Like the wiser sort, whose learning
+Hides their inward will of harming.
+
+"Well was I, while under shade
+Oaten reeds me music made,
+Striving with my mates in song;
+Mixing mirth our songs among.
+Greater was the shepherd's treasure
+Than this false, fine, courtly pleasure.
+
+"Where how many creatures be,
+So many puffed in mind I see;
+Like to Juno's birds of pride,
+Scarce each other can abide:
+Friends like to black swans appearing,
+Sooner these than those in hearing.
+
+"Therefore, Pan, if thou may'st be
+Made to listen unto me,
+Grant, I say, if seely man
+May make treaty to god Pan,
+That I, without thy denying,
+May be still to thee relying.
+
+"Only for my two loves' sake,
+In whose love I pleasure take;
+Only two do me delight
+With their ever-pleasing sight;
+Of all men to thee retaining,
+Grant me with those two remaining.
+
+"So shall I to thee always
+With my reeds sound mighty praise:
+And first lamb that shall befall,
+Yearly deck thine altar shall,
+If it please thee to be reflected,
+And I from thee not rejected."
+
+So I left him in that place,
+Taking pity on his case;
+Learning this among the rest,
+That the mean estate is best;
+Better filled with contenting,
+Void of wishing and repenting.
+
+
+
+POEM:  DIRGE
+
+
+
+Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread,
+For Love is dead:
+All Love is dead, infected
+With plague of deep disdain:
+Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
+And faith fair scorn doth gain.
+From so ungrateful fancy;
+From such a female frenzy;
+From them that use men thus,
+Good Lord, deliver us.
+
+Weep, neighbours, weep, do you not hear it said
+That Love is dead:
+His death-bed, peacock's folly:
+His winding-sheet is shame;
+His will, false-seeming holy,
+His sole executor, blame.
+From so ungrateful fancy;
+From such a female frenzy;
+From them that use men thus,
+Good Lord, deliver us.
+
+Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read,
+For Love is dead:
+Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth
+My mistress' marble heart;
+Which epitaph containeth,
+"Her eyes were once his dart."
+From so ungrateful fancy;
+From such a female frenzy;
+From them that use men thus,
+Good Lord, deliver us.
+
+Alas! I lie:  rage hath this error bred;
+Love is not dead,
+Love is not dead, but sleepeth
+In her unmatched mind:
+Where she his counsel keepeth
+Till due deserts she find.
+Therefore from so vile fancy,
+To call such wit a frenzy:
+Who Love can temper thus,
+Good Lord, deliver us.
+
+
+
+POEM:  STANZAS TO LOVE
+
+
+
+Ah, poor Love, why dost thou live,
+Thus to see thy service lost;
+If she will no comfort give,
+Make an end, yield up the ghost!
+
+That she may, at length, approve
+That she hardly long believed,
+That the heart will die for love
+That is not in time relieved.
+
+Oh, that ever I was born
+Service so to be refused;
+Faithful love to be forborn!
+Never love was so abused.
+
+But, sweet Love, be still awhile;
+She that hurt thee, Love, may heal thee;
+Sweet!  I see within her smile
+More than reason can reveal thee.
+
+For, though she be rich and fair,
+Yet she is both wise and kind,
+And, therefore, do thou not despair
+But thy faith may fancy find.
+
+Yet, although she be a queen
+That may such a snake despise,
+Yet, with silence all unseen,
+Run, and hide thee in her eyes:
+
+Where if she will let thee die,
+Yet at latest gasp of breath,
+Say that in a lady's eye
+Love both took his life and death.
+
+
+
+POEM:  A REMEDY FOR LOVE
+
+
+
+Philoclea and Pamela sweet,
+By chance, in one great house did meet;
+And meeting, did so join in heart,
+That th' one from th' other could not part:
+And who indeed (not made of stones)
+Would separate such lovely ones?
+The one is beautiful, and fair
+As orient pearls and rubies are;
+And sweet as, after gentle showers,
+The breath is of some thousand flowers:
+For due proportion, such an air
+Circles the other, and so fair,
+That it her brownness beautifies,
+And doth enchant the wisest eyes.
+
+Have you not seen, on some great day,
+Two goodly horses, white and bay,
+Which were so beauteous in their pride,
+You knew not which to choose or ride?
+Such are these two; you scarce can tell,
+Which is the daintier bonny belle;
+And they are such, as, by my troth,
+I had been sick with love of both,
+And might have sadly said, 'Good-night
+Discretion and good fortune quite;'
+But that young Cupid, my old master,
+Presented me a sovereign plaster:
+Mopsa! ev'n Mopsa! (precious pet)
+Whose lips of marble, teeth of jet,
+Are spells and charms of strong defence,
+To conjure down concupiscence.
+
+How oft have I been reft of sense,
+By gazing on their excellence,
+But meeting Mopsa in my way,
+And looking on her face of clay,
+Been healed, and cured, and made as sound,
+As though I ne'er had had a wound?
+And when in tables of my heart,
+Love wrought such things as bred my smart,
+Mopsa would come, with face of clout,
+And in an instant wipe them out.
+And when their faces made me sick,
+Mopsa would come, with face of brick,
+A little heated in the fire,
+And break the neck of my desire.
+Now from their face I turn mine eyes,
+But (cruel panthers!) they surprise
+Me with their breath, that incense sweet,
+Which only for the gods is meet,
+And jointly from them doth respire,
+Like both the Indies set on fire:
+
+Which so o'ercomes man's ravished sense,
+That souls, to follow it, fly hence.
+No such-like smell you if you range
+To th' Stocks, or Cornhill's square Exchange;
+There stood I still as any stock,
+Till Mopsa, with her puddle dock,
+Her compound or electuary,
+Made of old ling and young canary,
+Bloat-herring, cheese, and voided physic,
+Being somewhat troubled with a phthisic,
+Did cough, and fetch a sigh so deep,
+As did her very bottom sweep:
+Whereby to all she did impart,
+How love lay rankling at her heart:
+Which, when I smelt, desire was slain,
+And they breathed forth perfumes in vain.
+Their angel voice surprised me now;
+But Mopsa, her Too-whit, Too-whoo,
+Descending through her oboe nose,
+Did that distemper soon compose.
+
+And, therefore, O thou precious owl,
+The wise Minerva's only fowl;
+What, at thy shrine, shall I devise
+To offer up a sacrifice?
+Hang AEsculapius, and Apollo,
+And Ovid, with his precious shallow.
+Mopsa is love's best medicine,
+True water to a lover's wine.
+Nay, she's the yellow antidote,
+Both bred and born to cut Love's throat:
+Be but my second, and stand by,
+Mopsa, and I'll them both defy;
+And all else of those gallant races,
+Who wear infection in their faces;
+For thy face (that Medusa's shield!)
+Will bring me safe out of the field.
+
+
+
+POEM:  VERSES
+
+
+
+To the tune of the Spanish song, "Si tu senora no ducles de mi."
+
+O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
+In whom all joys so well agree,
+Heart and soul do sing in me.
+This you hear is not my tongue,
+Which once said what I conceived;
+For it was of use bereaved,
+With a cruel answer stung.
+No! though tongue to roof be cleaved,
+Fearing lest he chastised be,
+Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
+In whom all joys so well agree,
+Just accord all music makes;
+In thee just accord excelleth,
+Where each part in such peace dwelleth,
+One of other beauty takes.
+Since then truth to all minds telleth,
+That in thee lives harmony,
+Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
+In whom all joys so well agree,
+They that heaven have known do say,
+That whoso that grace obtaineth,
+To see what fair sight there reigneth,
+Forced are to sing alway:
+So then since that heaven remaineth
+In thy face, I plainly see,
+Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+O fair! O sweet! when I do look on thee,
+In whom all joys so well agree,
+Sweet, think not I am at ease,
+For because my chief part singeth;
+This song from death's sorrow springeth:
+As to swan in last disease:
+For no dumbness, nor death, bringeth
+Stay to true love's melody:
+Heart and soul do sing in me.
+
+
+
+POEM:  TRANSLATION
+
+
+
+From Horace, Book II. Ode X., beginning "Rectius vives, Licini," &c.
+
+You better sure shall live, not evermore
+Trying high seas; nor, while sea's rage you flee,
+Pressing too much upon ill-harboured shore.
+
+The golden mean who loves, lives safely free
+From filth of foreworn house, and quiet lives,
+Released from court, where envy needs must be.
+
+The wind most oft the hugest pine tree grieves:
+The stately towers come down with greater fall:
+The highest hills the bolt of thunder cleaves.
+
+Evil haps do fill with hope, good haps appall
+With fear of change, the courage well prepared:
+Foul winters, as they come, away they shall.
+
+Though present times, and past, with evils be snared,
+They shall not last:  with cithern silent Muse,
+Apollo wakes, and bow hath sometime spared.
+
+In hard estate, with stout shows, valour use,
+The same man still, in whom wisdom prevails;
+In too full wind draw in thy swelling sails.
+
+
+
+POEM:  A SONNET BY SIR EDWARD DYER
+
+
+
+Prometheus, when first from heaven high
+He brought down fire, till then on earth not seen;
+Fond of delight, a satyr, standing by,
+Gave it a kiss, as it like sweet had been.
+
+Feeling forthwith the other burning power,
+Wood with the smart, with shouts and shrieking shrill,
+He sought his ease in river, field, and bower;
+But, for the time, his grief went with him still.
+
+So silly I, with that unwonted sight,
+In human shape an angel from above,
+Feeding mine eyes, th' impression there did light;
+That since I run and rest as pleaseth love:
+The difference is, the satyr's lips, my heart,
+He for a while, I evermore, have smart.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S SONNET IN REPLY
+
+
+
+A satyr once did run away for dread,
+With sound of horn which he himself did blow:
+Fearing and feared, thus from himself he fled,
+Deeming strange evil in that he did not know.
+
+Such causeless fears when coward minds do take,
+It makes them fly that which they fain would have;
+As this poor beast, who did his rest forsake,
+Thinking not why, but how, himself to save.
+
+Ev'n thus might I, for doubts which I conceive
+Of mine own words, my own good hap betray;
+And thus might I, for fear of may be, leave
+The sweet pursuit of my desired prey.
+Better like I thy satyr, dearest Dyer,
+Who burnt his lips to kiss fair shining fire.
+
+
+
+POEM:  MUST LOVE LAMENT?
+
+
+
+My mistress lowers, and saith I do not love:
+I do protest, and seek with service due,
+In humble mind, a constant faith to prove;
+But for all this, I cannot her remove
+From deep vain thought that I may not be true.
+
+If oaths might serve, ev'n by the Stygian lake,
+Which poets say the gods themselves do fear,
+I never did my vowed word forsake:
+For why should I, whom free choice slave doth make,
+Else-what in face, than in my fancy bear?
+
+My Muse, therefore, for only thou canst tell,
+Tell me the cause of this my causeless woe?
+Tell, how ill thought disgraced my doing well?
+Tell, how my joys and hopes thus foully fell
+To so low ebb that wonted were to flow?
+
+O this it is, the knotted straw is found;
+In tender hearts, small things engender hate:
+A horse's worth laid waste the Trojan ground;
+A three-foot stool in Greece made trumpets sound;
+An ass's shade e'er now hath bred debate.
+
+If Greeks themselves were moved with so small cause,
+To twist those broils, which hardly would untwine:
+Should ladies fair be tied to such hard laws,
+As in their moods to take a ling'ring pause?
+I would it not, their metal is too fine.
+
+My hand doth not bear witness with my heart,
+She saith, because I make no woeful lays,
+To paint my living death and endless smart:
+And so, for one that felt god Cupid's dart,
+She thinks I lead and live too merry days.
+
+Are poets then the only lovers true,
+Whose hearts are set on measuring a verse?
+Who think themselves well blest, if they renew
+Some good old dump that Chaucer's mistress knew;
+And use but you for matters to rehearse.
+
+Then, good Apollo, do away thy bow:
+Take harp and sing in this our versing time,
+And in my brain some sacred humour flow,
+That all the earth my woes, sighs, tears may know;
+And see you not that I fall low to rhyme.
+
+As for my mirth, how could I but be glad,
+Whilst that methought I justly made my boast
+That only I the only mistress had?
+But now, if e'er my face with joy be clad,
+Think Hannibal did laugh when Carthage lost.
+
+Sweet lady, as for those whose sullen cheer,
+Compared to me, made me in lightness sound;
+Who, stoic-like, in cloudy hue appear;
+Who silence force to make their words more dear;
+Whose eyes seem chaste, because they look on ground:
+
+Believe them not, for physic true doth find,
+Choler adust is joyed in woman-kind.
+
+
+
+POEM:  A DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO SHEPHERDS
+
+
+
+Uttered in a Pastoral Show at Wilton.
+
+WILL.  Dick, since we cannot dance, come, let a cheerful voice
+Show that we do not grudge at all when others do rejoice.
+
+DICK.  Ah Will, though I grudge not, I count it feeble glee,
+With sight made dim with daily tears another's sport to see.
+Whoever lambkins saw, yet lambkins love to play,
+To play when that their loved dams are stolen or gone astray?
+If this in them be true, as true in men think I,
+A lustless song forsooth thinks he that hath more lust to cry.
+
+WILL.  A time there is for all, my mother often says,
+When she, with skirts tucked very high, with girls at football plays
+When thou hast mind to weep, seek out some smoky room:
+Now let those lightsome sights we see thy darkness overcome.
+
+DICK.  What joy the joyful sun gives unto bleared eyes;
+That comfort in these sports you like, my mind his comfort tries.
+
+WILL.  What?  Is thy bagpipe broke, or are thy lambs miswent;
+Thy wallet or thy tar-box lost; or thy new raiment-rent?
+
+DICK.  I would it were but thus, for thus it were too well.
+
+WILL.  Thou see'st my ears do itch at it:  good Dick thy sorrow
+tell.
+
+DICK.  Hear then, and learn to sigh:  a mistress I do serve,
+Whose wages make me beg the more, who feeds me till I starve;
+Whose livery is such, as most I freeze apparelled most,
+And looks so near unto my cure, that I must needs be lost.
+
+WILL.  What?  These are riddles sure:  art thou then bound to her?
+
+DICK.  Bound as I neither power have, nor would have power, to stir.
+
+WILL.  Who bound thee?
+
+DICK.  Love, my lord.
+
+WILL.  What witnesses thereto?
+
+DICK.  Faith in myself, and Worth in her, which no proof can undo.
+
+WILL.  What seal?
+
+DICK.  My heart deep graven.
+
+WILL.  Who made the band so fast?
+
+DICK.  Wonder that, by two so black eyes the glitt'ring stars be
+past.
+
+WILL.  What keepeth safe thy band?
+
+DICK.  Remembrance is the chest
+Lock'd fast with knowing that she is of worldly things the best.
+
+WILL.  Thou late of wages plain'dst:  what wages may'sh thou have?
+
+DICK.  Her heavenly looks, which more and more do give me cause to
+crave.
+
+WILL.  If wages make you want, what food is that she gives?
+
+DICK.  Tear's drink, sorrow's meat, wherewith not I, but in me my
+death lives.
+
+WILL.  What living get you then?
+
+DICK.  Disdain; but just disdain;
+So have I cause myself to plain, but no cause to complain.
+
+WILL.  What care takes she for thee?
+
+DICK.  Her care is to prevent
+My freedom, with show of her beams, with virtue, my content.
+
+WILL.  God shield us from such dames!  If so our dames be sped,
+The shepherds will grow lean I trow, their sheep will be ill-fed.
+But Dick, my counsel mark:  run from the place of woo:
+The arrow being shot from far doth give the smaller blow.
+
+DICK.  Good Will, I cannot take thy good advice; before
+That foxes leave to steal, they find they die therefore.
+
+WILL.  Then, Dick, let us go hence lest we great folks annoy:
+For nothing can more tedious be than plaint in time of joy.
+
+DICK.  Oh hence!  O cruel word! which even dogs do hate:
+But hence, even hence, I must needs go; such is my dogged fate.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONG
+
+
+
+To the tune of "Wilhelmus van Nassau," &c.
+
+Who hath his fancy pleased,
+With fruits of happy sight,
+Let here his eyes be raised
+On Nature's sweetest light;
+A light which doth dissever,
+And yet unite the eyes;
+A light which, dying, never
+Is cause the looker dies.
+
+She never dies, but lasteth
+In life of lover's heart;
+He ever dies that wasteth
+In love his chiefest part.
+Thus is her life still guarded,
+In never dying faith;
+Thus is his death rewarded,
+Since she lives in his death.
+
+Look then and die, the pleasure
+Doth answer well the pain;
+Small loss of mortal treasure,
+Who may immortal gain.
+Immortal be her graces,
+Immortal is her mind;
+They, fit for heavenly places,
+This heaven in it doth bind.
+
+But eyes these beauties see not,
+Nor sense that grace descries;
+Yet eyes deprived be not
+From sight of her fair eyes:
+Which, as of inward glory
+They are the outward seal,
+So may they live still sorry,
+Which die not in that weal.
+
+But who hath fancies pleased,
+With fruits of happy sight,
+Let here his eyes be raised
+On Nature's sweetest light.
+
+
+
+POEM:  THE SMOKES OF MELANCHOLY
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Who hath e'er felt the change of love,
+And known those pangs that losers prove,
+May paint my face without seeing me,
+And write the state how my fancies be,
+The loathsome buds grown on Sorrow's tree.
+
+But who by hearsay speaks, and hath not fully felt
+What kind of fires they be in which those spirits melt,
+Shall guess, and fail, what doth displease,
+Feeling my pulse, miss my disease.
+
+II.
+
+O no!  O no! trial only shows
+The bitter juice of forsaken woes;
+Where former bliss, present evils do stain;
+Nay, former bliss adds to present pain,
+While remembrance doth both states contain.
+Come, learners, then to me, the model of mishap,
+Ingulphed in despair, slid down from Fortune's lap;
+And, as you like my double lot,
+Tread in my steps, or follow not.
+
+III.
+
+For me, alas!  I am full resolved
+Those bands, alas! shall not be dissolved;
+Nor break my word, though reward come late;
+Nor fail my faith in my failing fate;
+Nor change in change, though change change my state:
+
+But always own myself, with eagle-eyed Truth, to fly
+Up to the sun, although the sun my wings do fry;
+For if those flames burn my desire,
+Yet shall I die in Phoenix' fire.
+
+
+
+POEM:  ODE
+
+
+
+When, to my deadly pleasure,
+When to my lively torment,
+Lady, mine eyes remained
+Joined, alas! to your beams.
+
+With violence of heavenly
+Beauty, tied to virtue;
+Reason abashed retired;
+Gladly my senses yielded.
+
+Gladly my senses yielding,
+Thus to betray my heart's fort,
+Left me devoid of all life.
+
+They to the beamy suns went,
+Where, by the death of all deaths,
+Find to what harm they hastened.
+
+Like to the silly Sylvan,
+Burned by the light he best liked,
+When with a fire he first met.
+
+Yet, yet, a life to their death,
+Lady you have reserved;
+Lady the life of all love.
+
+For though my sense be from me,
+And I be dead, who want sense,
+Yet do we both live in you.
+
+Turned anew, by your means,
+Unto the flower that aye turns,
+As you, alas! my sun bends.
+
+Thus do I fall to rise thus;
+Thus do I die to live thus;
+Changed to a change, I change not.
+
+Thus may I not be from you;
+Thus be my senses on you;
+Thus what I think is of you;
+Thus what I seek is in you;
+All what I am, it is you.
+
+
+
+POEM:  VERSES
+
+
+
+To the tune of a Neapolitan song, which beginneth, "No, no, no, no."
+
+No, no, no, no, I cannot hate my foe,
+Although with cruel fire,
+First thrown on my desire,
+She sacks my rendered sprite;
+For so fair a flame embraces
+All the places,
+Where that heat of all heats springeth,
+That it bringeth
+To my dying heart some pleasure,
+Since his treasure
+Burneth bright in fairest light.  No, no, no, no.
+
+No, no, no, no, I cannot hate my foe,
+Although with cruel fire,
+First thrown on my desire,
+She sacks my rendered sprite;
+Since our lives be not immortal,
+But to mortal
+Fetters tied, do wait the hour
+Of death's power,
+They have no cause to be sorry
+Who with glory
+End the way, where all men stay.  No, no, no, no.
+
+No, no, no, no, I cannot hate my foe,
+Although with cruel fire,
+First thrown on my desire,
+She sacks my rendered sprite;
+No man doubts, whom beauty killeth,
+Fair death feeleth,
+And in whom fair death proceedeth,
+Glory breedeth:
+So that I, in her beams dying,
+Glory trying,
+Though in pain, cannot complain.  No, no, no, no.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONG
+
+
+
+To the tune of a Neapolitan Villanel.
+
+All my sense thy sweetness gained;
+Thy fair hair my heart enchained;
+My poor reason thy words moved,
+So that thee, like heaven, I loved.
+
+Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan:
+Dan, dan, dan, deridan, deridan, dei:
+While to my mind the outside stood,
+For messenger of inward good.
+
+Nor thy sweetness sour is deemed;
+Thy hair not worth a hair esteemed;
+Reason hath thy words removed,
+Finding that but words they proved.
+
+Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan,
+Dan, dan, dan, deridan, deridan, dei:
+For no fair sign can credit win,
+If that the substance fail within.
+
+No more in thy sweetness glory,
+For thy knitting hair be sorry;
+Use thy words but to bewail thee
+That no more thy beams avail thee;
+Dan, dan,
+Dan, dan,
+Lay not thy colours more to view,
+Without the picture be found true.
+
+Woe to me, alas, she weepeth!
+Fool! in me what folly creepeth?
+Was I to blaspheme enraged,
+Where my soul I have engaged?
+Dan, dan,
+Dan, dan,
+And wretched I must yield to this;
+The fault I blame her chasteness is.
+
+Sweetness! sweetly pardon folly;
+Tie me, hair, your captive wholly:
+Words!  O words of heavenly knowledge!
+Know, my words their faults acknowledge;
+Dan, dan,
+Dan, dan,
+And all my life I will confess,
+The less I love, I live the less.
+
+
+
+POEM:  TRANSLATION
+
+
+
+From "La Diana de Monte-Mayor," in Spanish:  where Sireno, a
+shepherd, whose mistress Diana had utterly forsaken him, pulling out
+a little of her hair, wrapped about with green silk, to the hair he
+thus bewailed himself.
+
+What changes here, O hair,
+I see, since I saw you!
+How ill fits you this green to wear,
+For hope, the colour due!
+Indeed, I well did hope,
+Though hope were mixed with fear,
+No other shepherd should have scope
+Once to approach this hair.
+
+Ah hair! how many days
+My Dian made me show,
+With thousand pretty childish plays,
+If I ware you or no:
+Alas, how oft with tears, -
+O tears of guileful breast! -
+She seemed full of jealous fears,
+Whereat I did but jest.
+
+Tell me, O hair of gold,
+If I then faulty be,
+That trust those killing eyes I would,
+Since they did warrant me?
+Have you not seen her mood,
+What streams of tears she spent,
+'Till that I sware my faith so stood,
+As her words had it bent?
+
+Who hath such beauty seen
+In one that changeth so?
+Or where one's love so constant been,
+Who ever saw such woe?
+Ah, hair! are you not grieved
+To come from whence you be,
+Seeing how once you saw I lived,
+To see me as you see?
+
+On sandy bank of late,
+I saw this woman sit;
+Where, "Sooner die than change my state,"
+She with her finger writ:
+Thus my belief was staid,
+Behold Love's mighty hand
+On things were by a woman said,
+And written in the sand.
+
+
+The same Sireno in "Monte-Mayor," holding his mistress's glass
+before her, and looking upon her while she viewed herself, thus
+sang:-
+
+
+Of this high grace, with bliss conjoined,
+No farther debt on me is laid,
+Since that in self-same metal coined,
+Sweet lady, you remain well paid;
+
+For if my place give me great pleasure,
+Having before my nature's treasure,
+In face and eyes unmatched being,
+You have the same in my hands, seeing
+What in your face mine eyes do measure.
+
+Nor think the match unevenly made,
+That of those beams in you do tarry,
+The glass to you but gives a shade,
+To me mine eyes the true shape carry;
+For such a thought most highly prized,
+Which ever hath Love's yoke despised,
+Better than one captived perceiveth,
+Though he the lively form receiveth,
+The other sees it but disguised.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONNETS
+
+
+
+The dart, the beams, the sting, so strong I prove,
+Which my chief part doth pass through, parch, and tie,
+That of the stroke, the heat, and knot of love,
+Wounded, inflamed, knit to the death, I die.
+
+Hardened and cold, far from affection's snare
+Was once my mind, my temper, and my life;
+While I that sight, desire, and vow forbare,
+Which to avoid, quench, lose, nought boasted strife.
+
+Yet will not I grief, ashes, thraldom change
+For others' ease, their fruit, or free estate;
+So brave a shot, dear fire, and beauty strange,
+Bid me pierce, burn, and bind, long time and late,
+And in my wounds, my flames, and bonds, I find
+A salve, fresh air, and bright contented mind.
+
+* * *
+
+Virtue, beauty, and speech, did strike, wound, charm,
+My heart, eyes, ears, with wonder, love, delight,
+First, second, last, did bind, enforce, and arm,
+His works, shows, suits, with wit, grace, and vows' might,
+
+Thus honour, liking, trust, much, far, and deep,
+Held, pierced, possessed, my judgment, sense, and will,
+Till wrongs, contempt, deceit, did grow, steal, creep,
+Bands, favour, faith, to break, defile, and kill,
+
+Then grief, unkindness, proof, took, kindled, taught,
+Well-grounded, noble, due, spite, rage, disdain:
+But ah, alas! in vain my mind, sight, thought,
+Doth him, his face, his words, leave, shun, refrain.
+For nothing, time, nor place, can loose, quench, ease
+Mine own embraced, sought, knot, fire, disease.
+
+
+
+POEM:  WOOING-STUFF
+
+
+
+Faint amorist, what, dost thou think
+To taste Love's honey, and not drink
+One dram of gall? or to devour
+A world of sweet, and taste no sour?
+Dost thou ever think to enter
+Th' Elysian fields, that dar'st not venture
+In Charon's barge? a lover's mind
+Must use to sail with every wind.
+He that loves and fears to try,
+Learns his mistress to deny.
+Doth she chide thee? 'tis to show it,
+That thy coldness makes her do it:
+Is she silent? is she mute?
+Silence fully grants thy suit:
+Doth she pout, and leave the room?
+Then she goes to bid thee come:
+Is she sick? why then be sure,
+She invites thee to the cure:
+Doth she cross thy suit with "No?"
+Tush, she loves to hear thee woo:
+Doth she call the faith of man
+In question?  Nay, she loves thee than;
+And if e'er she makes a blot,
+She's lost if that thou hit'st her not.
+He that after ten denials,
+Dares attempt no farther trials,
+Hath no warrant to acquire
+The dainties of his chaste desire.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONNETS
+
+
+
+Since shunning pain, I ease can never find;
+Since bashful dread seeks where he knows me harmed;
+Since will is won, and stopped ears are charmed;
+Since force doth faint, and sight doth make me blind;
+Since loosing long, the faster still I bind;
+Since naked sense can conquer reason armed;
+Since heart, in chilling fear, with ice is warmed;
+In fine, since strife of thought but mars the mind,
+I yield, O Love, unto thy loathed yoke,
+Yet craving law of arms, whose rule doth teach,
+That, hardly used, who ever prison broke,
+In justice quit, of honour made no breach:
+Whereas, if I a grateful guardian have,
+Thou art my lord, and I thy vowed slave.
+
+When Love puffed up with rage of high disdain,
+Resolved to make me pattern of his might,
+Like foe, whose wits inclined to deadly spite,
+Would often kill, to breed more feeling pain;
+He would not, armed with beauty, only reign
+On those affects which easily yield to sight;
+But virtue sets so high, that reason's light,
+For all his strife can only bondage gain:
+So that I live to pay a mortal fee,
+Dead palsy-sick of all my chiefest parts,
+Like those whom dreams make ugly monsters see,
+And can cry help with naught but groans and starts:
+Longing to have, having no wit to wish,
+To starving minds such is god Cupid's dish.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONG
+
+
+
+To the tune of "Non credo gia che piu infelice amante."
+
+The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth
+Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
+While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,
+Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making;
+And mournfully bewailing,
+Her throat in tunes expresseth
+What grief her breast oppresseth,
+For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing.
+O Philomela fair!  O take some gladness,
+That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
+Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
+Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.
+
+II.
+
+Alas! she hath no other cause of anguish,
+But Tereus' love, on her by strong hand wroken,
+Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish,
+Full womanlike, complains her will was broken,
+But I, who daily craving,
+Cannot have to content me,
+Have more cause to lament me,
+Since wanting is more woe than too much having.
+O Philomela fair!  O take some gladness,
+That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
+Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
+Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.
+
+
+
+POEM:  SONG
+
+
+
+To the tune of "Basciami vita mia."
+
+Sleep, baby mine, Desire's nurse, Beauty, singeth;
+Thy cries, O baby, set mine head on aching:
+The babe cries, "'Way, thy love doth keep me waking."
+
+Lully, lully, my babe, Hope cradle bringeth
+Unto my children alway good rest taking:
+The babe cries, "Way, thy love doth keep me waking."
+
+Since, baby mine, from me thy watching springeth,
+Sleep then a little, pap Content is making;
+The babe cries, "Nay, for that abide I waking."
+
+I.
+
+The scourge of life, and death's extreme disgrace;
+The smoke of hell, the monster called Pain:
+Long shamed to be accursed in every place,
+By them who of his rude resort complain;
+Like crafty wretch, by time and travel taught,
+His ugly evil in others' good to hide;
+Late harbours in her face, whom Nature wrought
+As treasure-house where her best gifts do bide;
+And so by privilege of sacred seat,
+A seat where beauty shines and virtue reigns,
+He hopes for some small praise, since she hath great,
+Within her beams wrapping his cruel stains.
+Ah, saucy Pain, let not thy terror last,
+More loving eyes she draws, more hate thou hast.
+
+II.
+
+Woe! woe to me, on me return the smart:
+My burning tongue hath bred my mistress pain?
+For oft in pain, to pain my painful heart,
+With her due praise did of my state complain.
+I praised her eyes, whom never chance doth move;
+Her breath, which makes a sour answer sweet;
+Her milken breasts, the nurse of child-like love;
+Her legs, O legs! her aye well-stepping feet:
+Pain heard her praise, and full of inward fire,
+(First sealing up my heart as prey of his)
+He flies to her, and, boldened with desire,
+Her face, this age's praise, the thief doth kiss.
+O Pain!  I now recant the praise I gave,
+And swear she is not worthy thee to have.
+
+III.
+
+Thou pain, the only guest of loathed Constraint;
+The child of Curse, man's weakness foster-child;
+Brother to Woe, and father of Complaint:
+Thou Pain, thou hated Pain, from heaven exiled,
+How hold'st thou her whose eyes constraint doth fear,
+Whom cursed do bless; whose weakness virtues arm;
+Who others' woes and plaints can chastely bear:
+In whose sweet heaven angels of high thoughts swarm?
+What courage strange hath caught thy caitiff heart?
+Fear'st not a face that oft whole hearts devours?
+Or art thou from above bid play this part,
+And so no help 'gainst envy of those powers?
+If thus, alas, yet while those parts have woe;
+So stay her tongue, that she no more say, "O."
+
+IV.
+
+And have I heard her say, "O cruel pain!"
+And doth she know what mould her beauty bears?
+Mourns she in truth, and thinks that others feign?
+Fears she to feel, and feels not others' fears?
+Or doth she think all pain the mind forbears?
+That heavy earth, not fiery spirits, may plain?
+That eyes weep worse than heart in bloody tears?
+That sense feels more than what doth sense contain?
+No, no, she is too wise, she knows her face
+Hath not such pain as it makes others have:
+She knows the sickness of that perfect place
+Hath yet such health, as it my life can save.
+But this, she thinks, our pain high cause excuseth,
+Where her, who should rule pain, false pain abuseth.
+
+* * *
+
+Like as the dove, which seeled up doth fly,
+Is neither freed, nor yet to service bound;
+But hopes to gain some help by mounting high,
+Till want of force do force her fall to ground:
+Right so my mind, caught by his guiding eye,
+And thence cast off where his sweet hurt he found,
+Hath neither leave to live, nor doom to die;
+Nor held in evil, nor suffered to be sound.
+But with his wings of fancies up he goes,
+To high conceits, whose fruits are oft but small;
+Till wounded, blind, and wearied spirit, lose
+Both force to fly, and knowledge where to fall:
+O happy dove, if she no bondage tried!
+More happy I, might I in bondage bide!
+
+* * *
+
+In wonted walks, since wonted fancies change,
+Some cause there is, which of strange cause doth rise:
+For in each thing whereto mine eye doth range,
+Part of my pain, me-seems, engraved lies.
+The rocks, which were of constant mind the mark,
+In climbing steep, now hard refusal show;
+The shading woods seem now my sun to dark,
+And stately hills disdain to look so low.
+The restful caves now restless visions give;
+In dales I see each way a hard ascent:
+Like late-mown meads, late cut from joy I live;
+Alas, sweet brooks do in my tears augment:
+Rocks, woods, hills, caves, dales, meads, brooks, answer me;
+Infected minds infect each thing they see.
+If I could think how these my thoughts to leave,
+Or thinking still, my thoughts might have good end;
+If rebel sense would reason's law receive;
+Or reason foiled, would not in vain contend:
+Then might I think what thoughts were best to think:
+Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.
+
+If either you would change your cruel heart,
+Or, cruel still, time did your beauties stain:
+If from my soul this love would once depart,
+Or for my love some love I might obtain;
+Then might I hope a change, or ease of mind,
+By your good help, or in myself, to find.
+
+But since my thoughts in thinking still are spent.
+With reason's strife, by senses overthrown;
+You fairer still, and still more cruel bent,
+I loving still a love that loveth none:
+I yield and strive, I kiss and curse the pain,
+Thought, reason, sense, time, You, and I, maintain.
+
+
+
+POEM:  A FAREWELL
+
+
+
+Oft have I mused, but now at length I find
+Why those that die, men say, they do depart:
+Depart:  a word so gentle to my mind,
+Weakly did seem to paint Death's ugly dart.
+
+But now the stars, with their strange course, do bind
+Me one to leave, with whom I leave my heart;
+I hear a cry of spirits faint and blind,
+That parting thus, my chiefest part I part.
+
+Part of my life, the loathed part to me,
+Lives to impart my weary clay some breath;
+But that good part wherein all comforts be,
+Now dead, doth show departure is a death:
+
+Yea, worse than death, death parts both woe and joy,
+From joy I part, still living in annoy.
+
+* * *
+
+Finding those beams, which I must ever love,
+To mar my mind, and with my hurt to please,
+I deemed it best, some absence for to prove,
+If farther place might further me to ease.
+
+My eyes thence drawn, where lived all their light,
+Blinded forthwith in dark despair did lie,
+Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight,
+Deep plunged in earth, deprived of the sky.
+
+In absence blind, and wearied with that woe,
+To greater woes, by presence, I return;
+Even as the fly, which to the flame doth go,
+Pleased with the light, that his small corse doth burn:
+
+Fair choice I have, either to live or die
+A blinded mole, or else a burned fly.
+
+
+
+POEM:  THE SEVEN WONDERS OF ENGLAND
+
+
+
+I.
+
+Near Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found,
+But so confused, that neither any eye
+Can count them just, nor Reason reason try,
+What force brought them to so unlikely ground.
+
+To stranger weights my mind's waste soil is bound,
+Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason's sky,
+From Fancy's earth, passing all number's bound,
+Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
+So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows,
+A simple soul should breed so mixed woes.
+
+II.
+
+The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun
+Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends
+From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends,
+Sore sign it is the lord's last thread is spun.
+
+My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run
+But when my sun her shining twins there bends;
+Then from his depth with force in her begun,
+Long drowned hopes to watery eyes it lends;
+But when that fails my dead hopes up to take,
+Their master is fair warned his will to make.
+
+III.
+
+We have a fish, by strangers much admired,
+Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part:
+With gall cut out, closed up again by art,
+Yet lives until his life be new required.
+
+A stranger fish myself, not yet expired,
+Tho', rapt with Beauty's hook, I did impart
+Myself unto th' anatomy desired,
+Instead of gall, leaving to her my heart:
+Yet live with thoughts closed up, 'till that she will,
+By conquest's right, instead of searching, kill.
+
+IV.
+
+Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find
+Large rooms within where drops distil amain:
+Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain,
+Deck that poor place with alabaster lined.
+
+Mine eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my mind;
+Whose cloudy thoughts let fall an inward rain
+Of sorrow's drops, till colder reason bind
+Their running fall into a constant vein
+Of truth, far more than alabaster pure,
+Which, though despised, yet still doth truth endure.
+
+V.
+
+A field there is, where, if a stake oe prest
+Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt,
+Is changed to stone in hardness, cold, and weight,
+The wood above doth soon consuming rest.
+
+The earth her ears; the stake is my request;
+Of which, how much may pierce to that sweet seat,
+To honour turned, doth dwell in honour's nest,
+Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat;
+But all the rest, which fear durst not apply,
+Failing themselves, with withered conscience die.
+
+VI.
+
+Of ships by shipwreck cast on Albion's coast,
+Which rotting on the rocks, their death to die:
+From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly
+A bird, which gets more life than ship had lost.
+
+My ship, Desire, with wind of Lust long tost,
+Brake on fair cliffs of constant Chastity;
+Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost;
+So deep in seas of virtue, beauties lie:
+But of this death flies up the purest love,
+Which seeming less, yet nobler life doth move.
+
+VII.
+
+These wonders England breeds; the last remains -
+A lady, in despite of Nature, chaste,
+On whom all love, in whom no love is placed,
+Where Fairness yields to Wisdom's shortest reins.
+
+A humble pride, a scorn that favour stains;
+A woman's mould, but like an angel graced;
+An angel's mind, but in a woman cased;
+A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains:
+Now thus this wonder to myself I frame;
+She is the cause that all the rest I am.
+
+* * *
+
+Thou blind man's mark; thou fool's self-chosen snare,
+Fond fancy's scum, and dregs of scattered thought:
+Band of all evils; cradle of causeless care;
+Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought:
+
+Desire! Desire!  I have too dearly bought,
+With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware;
+Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought
+Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare;
+
+But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought;
+In vain thou mad'st me to vain things aspire;
+In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire:
+For Virtue hath this better lesson taught,
+Within myself to seek my only hire,
+Desiring nought but how to kill Desire.
+
+
+
+POEM:  FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN
+
+
+
+Leave me, O love! which reachest but to dust;
+And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things:
+Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
+Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
+
+Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
+To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be,
+Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light
+That doth both shine, and give us sight to see.
+
+O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide,
+In this small course which birth draws out to death,
+And think how evil becometh him to slide,
+Who seeketh heaven, and comes from heavenly breath.
+Then farewell, world, thy uttermost I see,
+Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.
+
+SPLENDIDIS LONGUM VALEDICO NUGIS
+
+
+
+Footnote:
+
+{1}  Edward Wotton, elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton.  He was
+knighted by Elizabeth in 1592, and made Comptroller of her
+Household.  Observe the playfulness in Sidney's opening and close of
+a treatise written throughout in plain, manly English without
+Euphuism, and strictly reasoned.
+
+{2}  Here the introduction ends, and the argument begins with its
+Part 1.  Poetry the first Light-giver.
+
+{3}  A fable from the "Hetamythium" of Laurentius Abstemius,
+Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and Librarian to Duke Guido
+Ubaldo under the Pontificate of Alexander VI. (1492-1503).
+
+{4}  Pliny says ("Nat. Hist.," lib. xi., cap. 62) that the young
+vipers, impatient to be born, break through the side of their
+mother, and so kill her.
+
+{5}  Part 2.  Borrowed from by Philosophers.
+
+{6}  Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian
+Critias are represented by Plato as having listened to the discourse
+of Socrates on a Republic.  Socrates calls on them to show such a
+state in action.  Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the
+ancient citizens of Attica, 10,000 years before, from an inroad of
+countless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis, in the
+Western Ocean; a struggle of which record was preserved in the
+temple of Naith or Athene at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down,
+through Solon, by family tradition to Critias.  But first Timaeus
+agrees to expound the structure of the universe; then Critias, in a
+piece left unfinished by Plato, proceeds to show an ideal society in
+action against pressure of a danger that seems irresistible.
+
+{7}  Plato's "Republic," book ii.
+
+{8}  Part 3.  Borrowed from by Historians.
+
+{9}  Part 4.  Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic.
+
+{10}  Part 5.  And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of
+David.
+
+{11}  Part 6.  By the Greeks, Poets were honoured with the name of
+Makers.
+
+{12}  Poetry is the one creative art.  Astronomers and others repeat
+what they find.
+
+{13}  Poets improve Nature.
+
+{14}  And idealize man.
+
+{15}  Here a Second Part of the Essay begins.
+
+{16}  Part 1.  Poetry defined.
+
+{17}  Part 2.  Its kinds.  a. Divine.
+
+{18} Philosophical, which is perhaps too imitative.
+
+{19} Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on
+Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain.
+
+{20}  Poetry proper.
+
+{21}  Part 3.  Subdivisions of Poetry proper.
+
+{22}  Its essence is in the thought, not in apparelling of verse.
+
+{23}  Heliodorus was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the
+fourth century.  His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the
+"AEthiopica," was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth's
+reign, translated into English.
+
+{24}  The Poet's Work and Parts.  Part 1. WORK:  What Poetry does
+for us.
+
+{25}  Their clay lodgings -
+
+"Such harmony is in immortal souls;
+But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
+Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."
+(Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice," act v., sc. 1)
+
+{26}  Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning, virtuous
+action.
+
+{27}  Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy.
+
+{28}  It's advantage herein over History.
+
+{29}  "All men make faults, and even I in this,
+Authorising thy trespass with compare."
+Shakespeare, "Sonnet" 35.
+
+{30}  "Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory,
+mistress of life, messenger of antiquity."--Cicero, "De Oratore."
+
+{31}  In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher, Historian,
+and all others (bating comparison with the Divine).
+
+{32}  He is beyond the Philosopher.
+
+{33}  Horace's "Ars Poetica," lines 372-3.  But Horace wrote "Non
+homines, non Di"--"Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have
+admitted mediocrity in poets."
+
+{34}  The moral common-places.  Common Place, "Locus communis," was
+a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy
+sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or
+adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a
+text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., "Because it is
+impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that
+give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of
+books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobaeus out of
+Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled
+'Polyanthea,' provides short and effective sentences apt to any
+matter."  Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good
+quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, "a common-place,"
+came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting,
+and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but
+commonly without wit in it.
+
+{35}  Thus far Aristotle.  The whole passage in the "Poetics" runs:
+"It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet
+are distinguished.  The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it
+would still be a species of History, no less with metre than
+without.  They are distinguished by this, that the one relates what
+has been, the other what might be.  On this account Poetry is more
+philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry
+is chiefly conversant about general truth; History about particular.
+In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would
+speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is
+the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names.
+But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him, this is particular
+truth."
+
+{36}  Justinus, who lived in the second century, made an epitome of
+the history of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Macedonian, and Roman
+Empires, from Trogus Pompeius, who lived in the time of Augustus.
+
+{37}  Dares Phrygius was supposed to have been a priest of Vulcan,
+who was in Troy during the siege, and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to
+him as early as the time of AElian, A.D. 230, was supposed,
+therefore, to be older than Homer's.
+
+{38}  Quintus Curtius, a Roman historian of uncertain date, who
+wrote the history of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which two
+are lost and others defective.
+
+{39}  Not knowledge but practice.
+
+{40}  The Poet Monarch of all Human Sciences.
+
+{41}  In "Love's Labour's Lost" a resemblance has been fancied
+between this passage and Rosalind's description of Biron, and the
+jest:-
+
+"Which his fair tongue--conceit's expositor -
+Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
+That aged ears play truant at his tables,
+And younger hearings are quite ravished,
+So sweet and voluble is his discourse."
+
+{42}  Virgil's "AEneid," Book xii.:-
+
+"And shall this ground fainthearted dastard
+Turnus flying view?
+Is it so vile a thing to die?"
+(Phaer's Translation [1573].)
+
+{43}  Instances of the power of the Poet's work.
+
+{44}  Defectuous.  This word, from the French "defectueux," is used
+twice in the "Apologie for Poetrie."
+
+{45}  Part II.  The PARTS of Poetry.
+
+{46}  Can Pastoral be condemned?
+
+{47}  The close of Virgil's seventh Eclogue--Thyrsis was vanquished,
+and Corydon crowned with lasting glory.
+
+{48}  Or Elegiac?
+
+{49}  Or Iambic? or Satiric?
+
+{50}  From the first Satire of Persius, line 116, in a description
+of Homer's satire:
+
+"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
+Tangit, et admissus circum praecordia ludit," &c.
+
+Shrewd Flaccus touches each vice in his laughing friend.  Dryden
+thus translated the whole passage:-
+
+"Unlike in method, with concealed design
+Did crafty Horace his low numbers join;
+And, with a sly insinuating grace
+Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face:
+Would raise a blush where secret vice he found;
+And tickle, while he gently probed the wound;
+With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled,
+But made the desperate passes while he smiled."
+
+{51}  From the end of the eleventh of Horace's epistles (Lib. 1):
+
+"Coelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt,
+Strenua nos exercet inertia; navibus atque
+Quadrigis petimus bene vivere.  Quod petis, hic est,
+Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus."
+
+They change their skies but not their mind who run across the seas;
+We toil in laboured idleness, and seek to live at ease
+With force of ships and four horse teams.  That which you seek is
+here,
+At Ulubrae, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.
+
+"At Ulubrae" was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the
+world, or anywhere.  Ulubrae was a little town probably in Campania,
+a Roman Little Pedlington.  Thomas Carlyle may have had this passage
+in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in Sartor
+Resartus:  "May we not say that the hour of spiritual
+enfranchisement is even this?  When your ideal world, wherein the
+whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to
+work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with
+amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your
+America is here or nowhere.  The situation that has not its duty,
+its ideal, was never occupied by man.  Yes, here, in this poor,
+miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or
+nowhere, is thy Ideal:  work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be
+free.  Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in
+thyself.  Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same
+Ideal out of.  What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or
+that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic?  O thou that
+pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the
+gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth,
+the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere,
+couldest thou only see."
+
+{52}  Or Comic?
+
+{53}  In pistrinum.  In the pounding-mill (usually worked by horses
+or asses).
+
+{54}  Or Tragic?
+
+{55}  The old song of Percy and Douglas, Chevy Chase in its first
+form.
+
+{56}  Or the Heroic?
+
+{57}  Epistles I. ii. 4.  Better than Chrysippus and Crantor.  They
+were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first
+commentator upon Plato.
+
+{58}  Summary of the argument thus far.
+
+{59}  Objections stated and met.
+
+{60}  Cornelius Agrippa's book, "De Incertitudine et Vanitate
+Scientiarum et Artium," was first published in 1532; Erasmus's
+"Moriae Encomium" was written in a week, in 1510, and went in a few
+months through seven editions.
+
+{61}  The objection to rhyme and metre.
+
+{62}  The first of these sentences is from Horace (Epistle I. xviii.
+69):  "Fly from the inquisitive man, for he is a babbler."  The
+second, "While each pleases himself we are a credulous crowd," seems
+to be varied from Ovid (Fasti, iv. 311):-
+
+"Conscia mens recti famae mendacia risit:
+Sed nos in vitium credula turba sumus."
+
+A mind conscious of right laughs at the falsehoods of fame but
+towards vice we are a credulous crowd.
+
+{63}  The chief objections.
+
+{64}  That time might be better spent.
+
+{65}  Beg the question.
+
+{66}  That poetry is the mother of lies.
+
+{67}  That poetry is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with wanton
+and pestilent desires.
+
+{68}  Rampire, rampart, the Old French form of "rempart," was
+"rempar," from "remparer," to fortify.
+
+{69}  "I give him free leave to be foolish."  A variation from the
+line (Sat. I. i. 63), "Quid facias illi? jubeas miserum esse
+libenter."
+
+{70}  That Plato banished poets from his ideal Republic.
+
+{71}  Which authority certain barbarous and insipid writers would
+wrest into meaning that poets were to be thrust out of a state.
+
+{72}  Ion is a rhapsodist, in dialogue with Socrates, who cannot
+understand why it is that his thoughts flow abundantly when he talks
+of Homer.  "I can explain," says Socrates; "your talent in
+expounding Homer is not an art acquired by system and method,
+otherwise it would have been applicable to other poets besides.  It
+is a special gift, imparted to you by Divine power and inspiration.
+The like is true of the poet you expound.  His genius does not
+spring from art, system, or method:  it is a special gift emanating
+from the inspiration of the Muses.  A poet is light, airy, holy
+person, who cannot compose verses at all so long as his reason
+remains within him.  The Muses take away his reason, substituting in
+place of it their own divine inspiration and special impulse . . .
+Like prophets and deliverers of oracles, these poets have their
+reason taken away, and become the servants of the gods.  It is not
+they who, bereft of their reason, speak in such sublime strains, it
+is the god who speaks to us, and speaks through them."  George
+Grote, from whose volumes on Plato I quote this translation of the
+passage, placed "Ion" among the genuine dialogues of Plato.
+
+{73}  Guards, trimmings or facings.
+
+{74}  The Second Summary.
+
+{75}  Causes of Defect in English Poetry.
+
+{76}  From the invocation at the opening of Virgil's AEneid (line
+12), "Muse, bring to my mind the causes of these things:  what
+divinity was injured . . . that one famous for piety should suffer
+thus."
+
+{77}  The Chancellor, Michel de l'Hopital, born in 1505, who joined
+to his great political services (which included the keeping of the
+Inquisition out of France, and long labour to repress civil war)
+great skill in verse.  He died in 1573.
+
+{78}  Whose heart-strings the Titan (Prometheus) fastened with a
+better clay.  (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 35).  Dryden translated the line,
+with its context -
+
+"Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see
+Who keep themselves from this infection free,
+Whom gracious Heaven for nobler ends designed,
+Their looks erected, and their clay refined."
+
+{79}  The orator is made, the poet born.
+
+{80}  What you will; the first that comes.
+
+{81}  "Whatever I shall try to write will be verse."  Sidney quotes
+from memory, and adapts to his context, Tristium IV. x. 26.
+
+"Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
+Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat."
+
+{82}  HIS for "its" here as throughout; the word "its" not being yet
+introduced into English writing.
+
+{83}  Defects in the Drama.  It should be remembered that this was
+written when the English drama was but twenty years old, and
+Shakespeare, aged about seventeen, had not yet come to London.  The
+strongest of Shakespeare's precursors had not yet begun to write for
+the stage.  Marlowe had not yet written; and the strength that was
+to come of the freedom of the English drama had yet to be shown.
+
+{84}  There was no scenery on the Elizabethan stage.
+
+{85}  Messenger.
+
+{86}  From the egg.
+
+{87}  Bias, slope; French "biais."
+
+{88}  Juvenal, Sat. iii., lines 152-3.  Which Samuel Johnson finely
+paraphrased in his "London:"
+
+"Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,
+Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest."
+
+{89}  George Bachanan (who died in 1582, aged seventy-six) had
+written in earlier life four Latin tragedies, when Professor of
+Humanities at Bordeaux, with Montaigne in his class.
+
+{90}  Defects in Lyric Poetry.
+
+{91}  Defects in Diction.  This being written only a year or two
+after the publication of "Euphues," represents that style of the day
+which was not created but represented by the book from which it took
+the name of "Euphuism."
+
+{92}  Nizolian paper-books, are commonplace books of quotable
+passages, so called because an Italian grammarian, Marius Nizolius,
+born at Bersello in the fifteenth century, and one of the scholars
+of the Renaissance in the sixteenth, was one of the first producers
+of such volumes.  His contribution was an alphabetical folio
+dictionary of phrases from Cicero:  "Thesaurus Ciceronianus, sive
+Apparatus Linguae Latinae e scriptis Tullii Ciceronis collectus."
+
+{93}  "He lives and wins, nay, comes to the Senate, nay, comes to
+the Senate," &c.
+
+{94}  Pounded.  Put in the pound, when found astray.
+
+{95}  Capacities of the English Language.
+
+{96}  Metre and Rhyme.
+
+{97}  Last Summary and playful peroration
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext A Defence of Poesie and Poems, by Sidney
+
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