菲利普·锡德尼《诗辩》

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.

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