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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Defence of Poesie and Poems, by Philip
+Sidney, Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Defence of Poesie and Poems
+
+
+Author: Philip Sidney
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2014  [eBook #1962]
+[This file was first posted on March 18, 1999]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DEFENCE OF POESIE AND POEMS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+
+                           A DEFENCE OF POESIE
+                                   AND
+                                  POEMS.
+
+
+                                    BY
+                            SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+                      _LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
+                                  1891.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+                                                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+
+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 Musæus, 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
+Tyrtæus 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 Virgilianæ;
+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 ποιητὴν, which name hath, as the most
+excellent, gone through other languages; it cometh of this word ποιεὶν,
+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
+Æneas?  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 μίμησις; 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 Tyrtæus, 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 ἀρχιτεκτονικὴ, 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, authórizing {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 memoriæ, magistra vitæ, 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 pœnæ” 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 Œdipus; 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 Æneas 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 poëtis
+    Non Dî, non homines, non concessere columnæ,” {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 Æsop’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 φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ πσουδαιότεοον, that is
+to say, it is more philosophical and more ingenious than history.  His
+reason is, because poesy dealeth with καθολου, that is to say, with the
+universal consideration, and the history καθ ἔκαστον, 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 Æneas in
+Virgil, than the right Æneas 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, Æneas, 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 Cæsar so advanced, that his name yet, after sixteen hundred years,
+lasteth in the highest honour?  And mark but even Cæsar’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
+φιλοφιλόσοφος, 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 γνῶσις but πράξις {39} must be the fruit: and
+how πράξις 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, Æneas; 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 Æneas 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 hæc 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 Melibæus’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,
+
+    “Hæc 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 præcordia 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 æquus.” {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 sævus 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 Pheræus; 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 Lacedæmonians 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,
+Æneas, 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 Æneas 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 μισομούσοι, 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 Æsop lied in
+the tales of his beasts; for who thinketh that Æsop 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 Æneas 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 φραστικὴ, which some learned have defined, figuring forth
+good things, to be φανταστικὴ, 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
+Phædrus 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 republicâ 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, Cæsars, Scipios, all favourers of poets; Lælius,
+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 Æsop’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 læso?” {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 præcordia 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 Dædalus to guide him.  That Dædalus, 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 be 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 some 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 “cæsura,” 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.
+
+
+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 joinéd 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 joinéd be.
+
+
+
+DISPRAISE OF A COURTLY LIFE.
+
+
+   WALKING in bright Phœbus’ 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 transforméd late,
+   Once to shepherds’ God retaining,
+   Now in servile court remaining.
+
+   There he wand’ring malecontent,
+   Up and down perpléxed 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 uséd 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 filléd with contenting,
+   Void of wishing and repenting.
+
+
+
+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 unmatchéd 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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 Æsculapius, 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.
+
+
+
+VERSES.
+
+
+_To the tune of the Spanish song_, “_Si tu señora 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,
+      Forcéd 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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 desiréd prey.
+      Better like I thy satyr, dearest Dyer,
+      Who burnt his lips to kiss fair shining fire.
+
+
+
+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 vowéd 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.
+
+
+
+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 lovéd 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 blearéd 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.
+
+
+
+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 deprivéd 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 pleaséd,
+   With fruits of happy sight,
+      Let here his eyes be raiséd
+   On Nature’s sweetest light.
+
+
+
+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,
+   Ingulphéd 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.
+
+
+
+ODE.
+
+
+   WHEN, to my deadly pleasure,
+   When to my lively torment,
+   Lady, mine eyes remainéd
+   Joinéd, alas! to your beams.
+
+   With violence of heavenly
+   Beauty, tied to virtue;
+   Reason abashed retiréd;
+   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 reservéd;
+   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.
+
+   Turnéd 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.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 seeméd 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 unmatchéd 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.
+
+
+
+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 embracéd, sought, knot, fire, disease.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+SONNETS
+
+
+   SINCE shunning pain, I ease can never find;
+      Since bashful dread seeks where he knows me harmed;
+      Since will is won, and stoppéd 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 vowéd 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.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 calléd 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 seeléd 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, engravéd 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.
+
+
+
+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 loathéd 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 livéd all their light,
+      Blinded forthwith in dark despair did lie,
+   Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight,
+      Deep plunged in earth, deprivéd 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 burnéd fly.
+
+
+
+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 mixéd 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 drownéd 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.
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+
+{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 § 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}  § 2.  _Borrowed from by Philosophers_.
+
+{6}  Timæus, 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 Athené
+at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down, through Solon, by family tradition to
+Critias.  But first Timæus 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}  § 3.  _Borrowed from by Historians_.
+
+{9}  § 4.  _Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic_.
+
+{10}  § 5.  _And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David_.
+
+{11}  § 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}  § 1.  Poetry defined.
+
+{17}  § 2.  _Its kinds_.  _a._  _Divine_.
+
+{18}  _b._  _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}  _c._  _Poetry proper_.
+
+{21}  § 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
+“Æthiopica,” was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth’s
+reign, translated into English.
+
+{24}  _The Poet’s Work and Parts_.  § 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}  _Its advantage herein over History_.
+
+{29}  “All men make faults, and even I in this,
+Authórising 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 Stobæus 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 Ælian, 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 agéd ears play truant at his tables,
+    And younger hearings are quite ravishéd,
+    So sweet and voluble is his discourse.”
+
+{42}  Virgil’s “Æneid,” 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}  § 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 præcordia 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 æquus.”
+
+    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 Ulubræ, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.
+
+“At Ulubræ” was equivalent to saying in the dullest corner of the world,
+or anywhere.  Ulubræ 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 “Moriæ 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 famæ 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 _Æneid_ (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’Hôpital, 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 “bìais.”
+
+{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 Linguæ
+Latinæ 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 THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DEFENCE OF POESIE AND POEMS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 1962-0.txt or 1962-0.zip *******
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