The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney ~ Full Audiobook
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the defence of poetry by sir philip sidney section one when the right virtuous edward wotton and i were at the emperor's court together we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of john pietro pugliano one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire in his stable

and he according to the fertile ness 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 loaden than when either angered with slow payment or moved by 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 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 courier 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 drave 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 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 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 note the silly latter silly almost equals poor return to text

And first, truly, to all of 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 they now play the hedgehog that, being received into the den, drave out his host? Or rather the vipers that, with their birth, kill their parents? Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets.'

nay let any history be brought that can say any writers were there before them if they were not men of the same skill as orpheus linus and some other are named who having been the first in that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to their 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 aspire to be a treasure house of science were the poets Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. So, in our English, were Goer 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 in other arts this did so notably show itself that the philosophers of greece durst not a long time appear to the world but under the masks of poets so thales empedocles and parmenides sang their natural philosophy in verses

so did pythagoras and phocylades their moral counsels so did teutius 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 and notable fable of the atlantic island which was continued by plato

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 standeth upon dialogues, wherein he feigneth many honest burgesses of Athens to speak of such matters, that if they had been set on the rack, they would never have confessed them.

besides his poetical describing of circumstances of their meetings as the well-ordering of a banquet the delicacy of a walk with interlacing mere tales as gygie's ring and others which who knoweth not to be flowers of poetry did never walk into apollo's garden

and even historiographers although their lips sound of things done and bear to be written in their foreheads have been glad to borrow both fashion and perchance weight of the poets so herodotus entitled his history by the name 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 mouths 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 passport 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 law-giving divines they have no other writers but poets in our neighbor country ireland where truly learning goeth 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 aretos both of their ancestors deeds and praises of their gods a sufficient probability that if ever learning come among them it must be by having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delights 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 line they had of poets was 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 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. Among the Romans a poet was called Wattis, which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or prophet, as by his conjoined words, Barikinium and Barikinari 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 chanceable hitting upon any such verses grateful tokens of their following fortunes were placed whereupon grew the word of sortes virgilianae when by sudden opening virgil's book they lighted upon some verse of his making

whereof the histories of the emperor's lives are full as of albinus the governor of our island who in his childhood met with this verse arma amens capio nexatrationis in armis and in his age performed it

Note, Albinus used frequently to sing among his playmates, Arma amens capio, nex saturationis in armies, afterwards repeating Arma amens capio as a kind of refrain. The line is from the Aeneid, Book 2, line 314. To arms I rush in frenzy, not that good cause is shown for arms.

albinus who was governor of britain led an army over to lyons against his rival septimius severus and was there slain return to text although it were a very vain and godless superstition as also it was to think that spirits were commanded by such verses whereupon this word charms derived of carmena 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 delphos and sybilla's prophecies were wholly delivered in verses for that same exquisite observing of number and measure in words and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper to the poet did seem to have some divine force in it

and may not i presume a little further to show the reasonableness of this word vates and say that the holy david 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 it 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 prose of poppaeus when he maketh you as it were see god coming in his majesty

his telling of the beast's joyfulness and hills leaping, but a heavenly poesy, wherein almost he showeth 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 now let us see how the greeks named it and how they deemed of it the greeks called him poyaten which name hath as the most excellent gone through other languages it cometh of this word poyane 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 so doth the astronomer look upon the stars and by that he seeth set down what order nature hath taken therein so do the geometrician and arithmetician in their divers 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 and 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 or 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 vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite new, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demigods, 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. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as diverse poets have done. Neither with 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 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 theogones so constant a friend as pylades so valiant a man as orlando so right a prince as zeliphan cyrus so excellent a man every way as virgil's aeneas

neither let this be jestingly conceived because the works of the one be essential the other in imitation or fiction for any understanding knoweth the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea or for 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 hath 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 hath been but a particular excellency, as nature might have done, but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make other 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 far surpassing her doings with no small argument 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 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 much 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 therefore is an art of imitation for so aristotle termeth it in his word mimesis that is to say a representing counterfeiting or figuring forth to speak metaphorically a speaking picture with this end to teach and delight of this have been three general kinds the chief both in antiquity and excellency were they that did imitate the inconceivable excellencies of god

Such were David in his Psalms, Solomon in his Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, Moses and Deborah in their hymns, and the writer of Job, which, beside other, the learned Emmanuel Tremelius and Franciscus 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 full wrong divinity were orpheus amphion homer in his hymns and many other both greeks and romans and this poesy must be used by whosoever will follow st james'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 second kind is of them that deal with matters philosophical, either moral, as Tertius, Pocylides, and Cato, or natural, as Lucretius and Virgil's Georgics, or astronomical, as Manilius 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, 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 third 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 reigned 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 whereinto they are moved, which being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet want there no idle tongues to bark at them. End of section one. Spring is in full bloom at the Home Depot. So what are you working on? If you're digging into your garden, come into the Home Depot's garden center, where we can help you pick out the best plants for your space.

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section two of the defence of poetry by sir philip sidney this librivox recording is in the public domain read by thomas copeland section two these 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 numberless kind of writing which is called verse

indeed but apparelled, a verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry, since there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and now swore many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give Asificiam Justi Imperii, the portraiture of a just empire, under the name of Cyrus, as Cicero saith of him,

made therein an absolute heroical poem so did heliodorus in his sugared invention of that picture of love in the agonies and curriclia 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 might be the right describing note to know a poet by

Although, indeed, the Senate of poets hath 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 chanceably fall from the mouth, but pezzing each syllable of each word by just proportion, according to the dignity of the subject.

now therefore it shall not be amiss first to weigh this latter sort of poetry by his works and then by his parts and if in neither of these anatomies he be condemnable i hope we shall obtain 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, 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 acquaintance with the stars, gave themselves to astronomy. Others, persuading themselves to be demigods if they knew the causes of things, became natural and supernatural philosophers.

"'Some an admirable delight drew to music, "'and some the certainty of demonstration 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 into a ditch,'

that the inquiring 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 each a private end in themselves so yet are they all directed to the highest end of the mistress knowledge by the greeks called architekton

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 further 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 the poet is worthy to have it before any other competitors among whom as principal challengers step forth the moral philosophers

whom, methinketh, 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 largesse 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

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 extendeth itself out of the limits of a man's own little world to the government of families and maintaining of public societies."

The historian scarcely giveth leisure to the moralist to say so much, but that he, loaden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing 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 goeth than how his own wit runneth 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 veritas, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis. Note from Cicero on Oratory 2936. History, the evidence of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the directress of life, the herald of antiquity. Return to text.

"'The philosopher,' saith he, "'teacheth a disputative virtue, but I do an active. "'His virtue is excellent in the dangerous academy of Plato, "'but mine showeth forth her honourable face "'in the battles of Marathon, Varsalia, Poitiers, 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 story 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 maketh a point in this that the one giveth the precept and the other the example

Now, whom shall we find, since the question standeth for the highest form in the school of learning, to be moderator? Truly, as meseemeth 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 more a philosopher, and if he go beyond them both, no other human skill can match him.

For, as for the divine, with all reverence, it is ever to be accepted, not only for having a scope as far beyond any of these as eternity exceedeth the moment, but even for passing each of these in themselves. And for the lawyer, though use be the daughter of justice, and justice the chief of virtues, yet because he seeketh to make men good rather for me in a poinai than retutis amore, note.

from horace epistles one sixteen fifty two to fifty three through love of virtue good men shrink from sin you commit no crime because you fear punishment or to say writer 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 that 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 till 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 doth a peerless poet perform both.

for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done he giveth a perfect picture of it in some one by whom he presupposeth 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 shapes colour bigness and particular marks or of a gorgeous palace an architecture worth 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 lively knowledge

but the same man as soon as he might see those beasts well painted or that house well in model should straightways grow without need of any description to a judicial comprehending of them

So, no doubt, the philosopher, with his learned definitions, be it of virtues 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 helps, 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 fullness of all Calypso's delights, bewail his absence from barren and beggarly Ithaca. Anger,' the Stoic said, "'was a short madness.'

let but sophocles bring you ajax on a stage killing and whipping sheep and oxen thinking them the army of greeks with their chieftains agamemnon and menelaus and tell me if you have not a more familiar insight into anger than finding in the schoolmen his genus and difference

see whether wisdom and temperance in ulysses and diomedes valour in achilles friendship in nisus and euryalus even to an ignorant man carry not an apparent shining and contrarily the remorse of conscience in oedipus the soon repenting pride of agamemnon the self-devouring cruelty in his father

the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers, the sour sweetness of revenge in Medea, and, to fall lower, the Terentian Natho and our Chaucer's Pander, 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. Note.

Theban brothers, Aetiocles and Polyneices, see Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes. Natho, a parasite in Terence's comedy The Eunuch, compare the English adjective nathonic. Return to text. But even in the most excellent determination of goodness, what philosopher's counsel can so readily direct a prince as the feigned Cyrus in Xenophon?

or a virtuous man in all fortunes as aeneas in virgil or a whole commonwealth as the way of sir thomas more's utopia i say the way because where sir thomas more erred it was the fault of the man and not of the poet for that way of patterning a commonwealth was most absolute though he perchance hath not so absolutely performed it

for the question is whether the feigned image of poesy or the regular instruction of philosophy hath the more force in teaching

wherein if the philosophers have more rightly showed themselves philosophers than the poets have attained to the high top of their profession, as, in truth, mediocribus esse poetis, non di, non homines, non concessora columnae, it is, I say again, not the fault of the art, but that by few men that art can be accomplished. Note. Mediocribus, etc. From Horace, Art of Poetry, 372-3.

mediocrity in poets is condemned by gods and men ay and booksellers too returned a text certainly even our saviour christ could as well have given the moral commonplaces of uncharitableness and humbleness as the divine narration of dives and lazarus

or of disobedience and mercy as that heavenly discourse of the lost child and the gracious father but that is through searching wisdom new 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, it seems I see before mine eyes "'the lost child's disdainful prodigality "'turned to envious 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 sop's fables 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 alledged that if this imagining of matters be so fit for the imagination then must the historian need surpass who bringeth you images of true matters such as indeed were done and not such as phantastically 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 philosophoteron and spondioteron that is to say it is more philosophical and more studiously serious than history his reason is because poesy dealeth with catola that is to say with the universal consideration and the history with catechiston 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 marketh whether alcibiades did or suffered this or that thus far aristotle which reason of his as all his is most full of reason

Note from Aristotle's Discourse of Poesy. Now the general shows how certain typical characters will speak and act according to the law of probability or of necessity, as poetry indicates by bestowing certain names upon these characters, but the particular merely relates what Alcibiades, a historic individual, actually did or suffered. Return to text.

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 would 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 and the feigned aeneas in virgil than the right aeneas in doris as to a lady that desired to fashion her countenance to the best grace a painter should more benefit her to portray a most sweet face writing canidia upon it than to paint canidia as she was who horace sweareth was foul and ill-favoured

if the poet do his part aright he will show you in tantalus atreus and such like nothing that is not to be shunned in cyrus aeneas ulysses each thing to be followed where the historian bound to tell things as things were cannot be liberal without he 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 Quintus Curtius?'

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 it hath some advantage to a gross conceit

but if he know an example only informs 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 hath 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 a poet and a historian do concur

Herodotus and Justin do both testify that Sopyrus, King Darius' 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 matter doth livy record of tarquinius and his son xenophon excellently feigneth such another stratagem performed by abraditus in cyrus behalf and 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 abraditus did not counterfeit so far so then the best of the historian 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 further teaching and more delighting as it pleaseth 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 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 as gotten 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 setteth 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 of 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 the historian, being captived to the truth of a foolish world, is many times a terror from well-doing, and an encouragement to unbridled wickedness. For seeming not valiant Miltiades wrought in his fetters, the just Phocion and the accomplished Socrates put to death like traitors, the cruel Severus lived prosperously, the excellent Severus miserably murdered,

sylla and marius dying in their beds pompey and cicero slain then when they would have thought exile a happiness see we not virtuous cato driven to kill himself and rebel caesar so advanced that his name yet after sixteen hundred years lasteth in the highest honour

and mark but even caesar's own words of the forenamed sylla who in that only did honestly to put down his dishonest tyranny literas nescivit as if want of learning caused him to do well note solum necissa literas qui dictaturum deposurit sidney evidently gathers some such meaning as this

zillah was without learning a man of untutored nobleness and for this reason laid down the dictatorship return to text he mentored not by poetry which not content with earthly plagues deviseth new punishments in hell for tyrants nor yet by philosophy which teacheth

note that they are to be slain returned text but no doubt by skill in history for that indeed can afford you cypsilas periander phalaris dionysius and i know not how many more of the same kennel that speed well enough in their abominable injustice or usurpation

I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth history, not only in furnishing the mind with knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which deserveth to be called and accounted good, which setting forward and moving to well-doing, indeed setteth the laurel crown upon the poet 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 piloylosopus 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 the 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 gnosus but paroxys which must be the fruit and how paroxys cannot be without being moved to practice 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 as 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 beholding to the philosopher but for the other half

nay truly learned men have learnedly thought that where once reason hath so much overmastered 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 labores. Note, this is the task, this the struggle. Virgil Aeneid, Book 6, line 129. End of section 2.

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Out here, there's no one way of doing things. No unwritten rules. And no shortage of adventure. Because out here, the only requirement is having fun.

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section three now 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 further

he beginneth not with obscure definitions which must blur the margent 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 the tail forsooth he cometh unto you with the tail which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner 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 others have a pleasant taste

which if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or rhubarb they should receive would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth so is it in men most of which are childish in the best things till they be cradled in their graves

glad they will be to hear the tales of hercules achilles cyrus aeneas and hearing them must needs hear the right description of wisdom valour and justice which if they had been barely that is to say philosophically set out they would swear they be brought to school again

that imitation where 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 Amadus de Gaulle, which God knoweth wanteth much of a perfect poesy, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage. "'Who readeth Aeneas, carrying old Anchises on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune to perform so excellent an act?'

Whom do not those words of Ternus move? The tale of Ternus, having planted his image in the imagination. Note, Aeneid 12, 645-646. Return to text.

were the philosophers as they scorn to delight so must they be content little to move saving wrangling whether virtue be the chief or the only good whether the contemplative or the active life to excel which plato and boethius well knew and therefore made mistress philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy note on the following sentence in dulgur genio referring to persius satires five one fifty one

give your genius play let us take pleasure as it comes life is ours and it is all we have return to text for even those hard-hearted evil men who think virtue a school name and know no other good but indulger agenio 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 seemeth 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 the medicine of cherries infinite 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 well have conceived but forsooth he behaves 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 labor. 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 ever 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 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 to 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 ensueth 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 or 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 piece we may find a blemish

Now, 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 tragical and comical, whereupon has risen the tragicomical. Some, in the like manner, have mingled prose and verse, as Sanazaro and Boethius. 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 for perchance where the hedge is lowest they will soonest leap over

is the poor pipe disdained which sometimes out of mellevious mouth can show the misery of people under hard lords and ravening soldiers and again by titarus what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest sometimes under the pretty tails of wolves and sheep can include the whole considerations of wrong-doing and patience sometimes show that contention for trifles can get but a trifling victory

where perchance a man may see that even alexander and darius when they both strave who should be cock of this world's dunghill the benefit they got was that the after-livers say haec memeni et victum frustra contender et tirsum exilu corredon corredon est tempora nobis

Note Virgil Eclog's 7, 69-70. These verses I remember, and how the vanquished Thyrsus vainly strove. From that day it has been with us, Corridon, none but Corridon. Return to text.

Or is it the lamenting elegiac, 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 compassionate accompanying just causes of lamentation, or for rightly painting out how weak be the passions of woefulness?

is it the bitter but wholesome iambic who rubs the galled mind in making shame the trumpet of villainy with bold and open crying out against naughtiness or the satiric who omne vafer vitium redenti tanget amico who sportingly never leaveth till 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 cricum praecordia lutet he plays about the innermost feelings return to text giveth us to feel how many headaches a passionate life bringeth us to how when all is done est ulubris animus sinus non defecit aequus horace who roameth proud from shore to shore shall find they change the climate only not the mind

and ulembrae may prove the seat of bliss ulembrae was a town at latium proverbial for its desolation return to text no perchance it is the comic whom naughty play-makers and stage-keepers have justly made odious to the argument of abuse i will answer after

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 what is to be looked for of a niggardly Demia, of a crafty Davis, of a flattering Natho, of a vainglorious 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 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 although perchance the sack of his own faults lies so behind his back that he seeth not himself to dance the same measure

where to yet nothing can more open his eyes than to find his own actions contemptibly set forth note on in pistrinum handed over to the mill returned a text so that the right use of comedy will i think by nobody be blamed and much less of the high and excellent tragedy that openeth the greatest wounds and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue

that maketh kings fear to be tyrants and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours that with stirring the effects of admiration and commiseration teacheth the uncertainty of this world and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builted that maketh us know qui sceptra xivus duro imperio regit temetimentes metus in auctorum redit

Seneca, Oedipus, 705-706. The savage tyrant, bearing sternest rule, dreads those who dread him, and his fear recoils to plague the inventor. Return to text.

But how much it can move, Plutarch yieldeth a notable testimony of the abominable tyrant Alexander Pharaeus, 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 is 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 further 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 mislike 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. "'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 cobwebs of that uncivil age what would it were trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of pindar in hungary i have seen it the manner at all feasts and other such meetings to have songs of their ancestors valour which that right soldier-like nation think the chiefest kindlers of brave courage

the incomparable lacedaemonians did not only carry that kind of music ever with them to the field but even at home as such songs were made so were they all content to be singers of them when the lusty men were to tell what they did the old men what they had done and the young men what they would do and where a man may say that pindar many times praiseth highly victories of small moment matters rather 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 his three fearful felicities

but as the unimitable pinder 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 heroico 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 it no less champions than achilles cyrus aeneas turnus tydeus rinaldo who doth not only teach and move to a 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 anything 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 inflamethe the mind with desire to be worthy and informs with counsel how to be worthy

Only let Aeneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how he governeth himself in the ruin of his country, in the preserving his old father and carrying away his religious ceremonies, in obeying the gods' commandment to leave Dido, though not only all 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 humor, "'he will be found in excellency fruitful.'

yea even as horace saith melios crescibo et cantore note horace better than all the logic of the sage than cranter's precepts or crescibo's page returned text 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 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 divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of making, and that indeed the name of making is fit for him, considering that whereas other arts retain themselves within their subject, and receive as it were their being from it, the poet 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 his 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 surpass the historian but for instructing is well nigh comparable to the philosopher and for moving leaveth him far 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 several 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 because we have ears as well as tongues and that the lightest reasons that may be 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 MISOMUSOI, POET-HATERS, BUT IN ALL THAT KIND OF PEOPLE WHO SEEK APPRAISE 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 very idle easiness 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 commodity of being sick of the plague

so of the contrary side if we will turn ovid's verse ut late at virtus proximitatem ali that good lie hid in nearness of the evil agrippa will be as merry in showing the vanity of science as erasmus was in commending of folly

"'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 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 throughly 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 needeth 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 "'Per cantatorum fugito, nam gaurulus idem est, "'dum sibi quisque placet credula turba sumus?' "'Note, Horace, Epistle 1, 1869. "'Avoid a curious man. "'He is sure to be a gossip.' "'Return to text.'

But the fitness it hath for memory is notably proved by all delivery of arts, wherein, for the most part, from grammar to logic, mathematic, 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 then go we to the most important amputations 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 siren's sweetness drawing the mind to the serpent's tale of sinful fancies and herein especially comedies give the largest field to ear as chaucer saith

how both in other nations and in ours before poets did soften us we were full of courage given to martial exercises the pillars of man-like liberty and not lulled asleep in shady idleness with poets pastimes and lastly and chiefly they cry out with an 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 to the first that a man might better spend his time is a reason indeed but it doth as they say but petere principium note beg the question return to text 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 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, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies. But the poet, as I said before, never affirmeth. The poet never maketh any circles about your imagination to conjure you to believe for true what he writeth.

He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry calleth the sweet muses to inspire into him a good invention. In Troth, not labouring to tell you what is or is not, but what should or should not be. And therefore, though he recount things not true, yet because he telleth them not for true, he lieth not.

without we will say that nathan lied in his speech before alleged to david which as a wicked man durst scarce say so think i none so simple would say that aesop lied in the tales of his beasts for who thinketh that aesop wrote it for actually true were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of what child is there that coming 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 at that child'sage 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 awry full fraught with falsehood so in poesy looking but for fiction they shall use the narration but as in 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 noakes 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 chessmen. And yet methinks he were a very partial champion of truth that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop. The poet nameth Cyrus and Aeneas no other way than to show what men of their fames, fortunes, and estates should do. The third is how much it abuseth men's wit, training it to wanton sinfulness and lustful love.

for indeed that is the principle if not the 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 would 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 whatsoever they will have granted that not only love but lust but vanity but if there is scurrilancy possesseth many leaves of the poet's 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 acasticae which some learned have defined figuring forth good things to be pantasticae which doth contrariwise infect the fancy with unworthy objects

as the painter that 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 poetry 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 should give reproach to the abused, that, contrarywise, it is a good reason that whatsoever being abused doth most harm, being rightly used, and upon the right use each thing receiveth his title, doth most good. Do we not see the skill of physic, the best rampire 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 mayst kill thy father and with a sword thou mayst defend thy prince and country so that as in their calling poets the fathers of lies they say 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 hath set their hearts delight upon action and not upon imagination rather doing things worthy to be written than writing things fit to be done

what that before-time was i think scarcely sphinx can tell since no memory is so ancient that hath the precedence of poetry and certain it is that in our plainest homeliness yet never was the albion nation without poetry this argument though it be levelled against poetry yet is it 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 these 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, "'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 with horace to him that is of that opinion iubio stultum esse libenter note cheerfully bid him go and be wretched as the line was then interpreted sidney accordingly means i cheerfully bid him be a fool return to text

for as for poetry itself it is the freest from this objection for poetry is the companion of the camps i dare undertake orlando furioso or honest king arthur will never displease a soldier but the quiddity of ends and the prima materia will hardly agree with the corselet 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 received their first motions 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 upon 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 soldier's role and therefore though cato misliked his unmustard 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 sepulchre

so is cato's authority being but against his person and that answered with so far greater than himself is herein of no validity but now indeed my burden 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 great 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 reasons 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 true points of knowledge they forthwith putting it in method and making a school art of that which the poets did only teach by a divine delightfulness

beginning to spurn at their guides like ungrateful prentices were not content to set up shops 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 strave who should have him for their citizen

where many cities banish philosophers as not fit members to live among them for only repeating certain of euripides verses many athenians had their lives saved the syracusans where the athenians themselves thought many philosophers unworthy to live certain poets as simonides and pindar had so prevailed with hiero i 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 made against poets with like cavilations against philosophers, as likewise one should do that should bid one read Phaedrus or Symposium in Plato, or the Discourse of Love in Plutarch, and see whether any poet do authorize 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

st paul himself who yet for the credit of poets allegeth twice two poets and one of them by the name of a prophet setteth 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 the 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 construed than unjustly resisted meant not in general of poets in those words of which julius scaliger saith qua autoritati barbari quid armatque hispidi abuti velent ad poetas e republica exigendos note poetics five a one which authority i e that of plato

certain rude and barbarous persons desire to abuse in order to banish poets out of the commonwealth return to text but only meant to drive out those wrong opinions of the deity whereof now without further law christianity hath taken away all the hurtful belief perchance as he thought nourished by the then esteemed poets and a man need go no further than to plato himself to know his meaning

who, in his dialogue called Ion, giveth high and rightly divine commendation unto poetry.

so as plato banishing the abuse not the thing not banishing it but giving due honour unto 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 honors have been by the best sort of judgments granted them, a whole sea of examples would present themselves. Alexanders, Caesars, Scipios, all favorers of poets. Lelius called the Roman Socrates himself a poet, so as part of Potantimurumanus in Terence was supposed to be made by him.

and even the greek socrates whom apollo confirmed to be the only wise man is said to have spent part of his old time in putting aesop's fables into verses and therefore full evil should it become his scholar plato to push 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 trimeth both their garments with guards of poesy but i list not to defend poesy with the help of his underling historiography let it suffice that it is a fit soil for praise to dwell upon and what dispraise may set upon it is either easily overcome or transformed into just commendation

so that since the excellencies of it may be so easily and so justly confirmed and the low creeping objections so soon trodden down 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 engarland our poets heads

which honor of being laureate as besides them only triumphant captains were is a sufficient authority to show the price they ought to be held in then suffer the ill-savored breath of such wrong speakers once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy part three marvel studios thunderbolts will take the world by storm

There's some people right out there, and you're going to help me stop it. Us? Why? You got someplace to be? On May 2nd. Avengers, you're gone. No one's coming to save the day. Their time. I think we could be the people that are coming. Has come. Being a hero, there is no higher calling. Let's do this. Marvel Studios Thunderbolts. Only in theaters May 2nd. Get tickets now. Rated PG-13. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. If fashion is your thing, eBay is it.

eBay's where I find all my favorites, from handbags to iconic streetwear, all authenticated. For real. This time, a little Supreme, some Gucci. I even have that vintage Prada on my watch list. That's why eBay's my go-to for all my go-tos. Yeah, eBay. The place for new, pre-loved, vintage, and rare fashion. eBay. Things people love. Section 4 of The Defense of Poesy by Sir Philip Sidney.

THE LIBERBOX RECORDING IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. READ BY THOMAS COPLAND. SECTION 4. BUT 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 STEPMOTHER TO POETS.

who certainly in wit ought to pass all others, since all only proceedeth from their wit, being indeed makers of themselves, not takers of others. How can I but exclaim, Musa mihi causas memora, quonumera laeso? Note, Virgil, Aeneid, 1, 12. O Muse, relate to me the causes. Tell me in what had her will been offended? Return to text.

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 bibena

such famous preachers and teachers as beza and melancthon so learned philosophers as fractistorius and scaliger so great orators as pontanus and nereidas so piercing wits as george buchanan

so grave counsellors as besides many but before all that hospital 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 poetize 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 lamenteth it and therefore decketh 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 hath rather be troubled in the net with mars than enjoy the homely quiet of vulcan so serves 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 till they make their readers more weary than post-horses while in the meantime they queis meliore luto finxit praecordia titan are better content to suppress the outflowings of their wit

than by publishing them to be accounted knights of the same order quaeus c sidney makes one line out of parts of two in english the passage will run whose hearts the titan has moulded out of better clay the titan is prometheus return to text 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 and 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 gift and no human skill since all other knowledges lie ready for any that hath strength of wit a poet no industry can make if his own genius be not carried into it

and therefore it is an old proverb orator fit poeta nascatur note the orator is made the poet is born return to text yet confess i always that as the fertilest ground must be manured so must the highest flying wit have a deadliest to guide him

that daedalus they say both in this and in other hath three wings to bear itself up into the air of due commendation that is art imitation and exercise but these neither artificial rules nor imitative patterns we much cumber ourselves withal

exercise indeed we do but that very for backwardly 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, quo libit indeed, though wrongly performing Ovid's verse, quicquid conobar dicere, verso serat, never marshalling it into any assured rank, that almost the readers cannot tell where to find themselves. Note, Ovid, Tristia, 410-26. And whatever I tried to express, the same was poetry. Return to text.

"'Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his Trilus 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 walk so stumblingly after him. Yet had he great wants, fit to be forgiven in so reverent 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 shepherd's calendar hath much poetry in his eclogues indeed worthy the reading if i be not deceived

that same framing of his style to an old rustic language i dare not allow since neither theocritus in greek virgil in latin nor salazaro 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 tragedies and comedies not without cause cried out against observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful poetry excepting gorbidoc 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's style and as full of notable morality which it doth most delightfully teach and so obtain the very end of

yet in truth it is very defectuous in the circumstances which grieveth 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 gorboduk how much more in all the rest where you shall have asia on the one side and afric on the other and so many other under kingdoms that the player when he cometh in must ever begin with telling where he is or else the tale will not be conceived

now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers and then we must believe the stage is to be a garden by and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a wrong 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 yet will some bring in an example of unicus in terence that containeth matter of two days yet far short of twenty years true it is and so it was to be played in two days and so fitted to the time it set forth

and though plotus have in one place done amiss let us hit with him and not miss with him when they will say how then shall we set forth a story which containeth 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 conveniency

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 paco de's horse and so was the manner the ancients took by some nuntius to recount things done in former time or other place

Lastly, if they will represent a history, they must not, as Horace said, begin abo-wo, 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 Primus to Polymnastor, king of Thrace, in the Trojan wartime. He, after some years hearing the overthrow of Primus, for to make the treasure his own, murdereth the child. The body of the child is taken up by Hecuba. She, the same day, findeth a slight 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 further 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 carryeth 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 tragicomedy 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 tragicomodies as plotus hath amphitryo but if we mark them well we shall find that they never or very daintily match hornpipes 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 rather 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 in nature. Delight hath a joy in it, neither permanent or present. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling. For example, we are ravished with delight to see a fair woman, and yet we 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, laugh sometimes "'to find a matter quite mistaken "'and go down the hill against the bias "'in the mouth of some such men. "'As for the respect of them, "'one shall be heartily sorry 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 woman's attire spinning at umfalle's commandment it breedeth both delight and laughter for the representing of so strange a power in love procureth 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 mixed 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 immiserable which are rather to be pitied than scorned for what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar or a beggarly clown or against 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 hobbit in felix paupertas durios in se quam codudiculus homines

note from juvenile satires three one fifty two to three poverty bitter though it be has no sharper pang than this that it makes men ridiculous return to text but rather a busy loving courtier a heartless threatening thraso a self-wise seeming schoolmaster 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 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 sorts of poetry almost have we none

but that lyrical kind of songs and sonnets which lord if he 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 have ever 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 lovers' writings, and so caught up certain swelling phrases, which hang together like a man which once told me the wind was at northwest and by south, because it would be sure to name winds enough,

than that in truth they feel those passions which easily as i think may be berated by that 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 for the outside of it which is words or as i may turn 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 may seem monsters, but must 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 diversifiers 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 nazilian paper-books of their figures and phrases as by attentive translation as it were to devour them whole and make them wholly theirs

For now, they cast sugar and spice upon every dish that is served to the table. Like those Indians, not content to wear earrings 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 Catalin, as it were with a thunderbolt of eloquence, often used that figure of repetition as, "'Vive it!' "'Vive it?'

Note, he lives. Lives? Aye, he comes even into the Senate. Return to text.

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 sometime to a familiar epistle when it were too much choler to be choleric

note i suspect that sidney here intends a pun upon collar and color color in the sense of figure of speech rhetorical ornament artifice

if this surmise is correct we must understand when it were too highly rhetorical to simulate anger in the following sentence similitare cadences a partial anglicization of quintilian's cadencia similitare a translation of the greek rhetorical term which is allied to and frequently identical with rhyme return to text how well store of similitare 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 might 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 erbarists 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 that 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 use these knacks very sparingly which who doth generally use any man may see doth dance to his own music and so 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 to hide art as in these cases he should do flieth from nature and indeed abuseth art

but what methinks i deserve to be pounded for straying from poetry to oratory but both have such an affinity in the wordish consideration 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 show 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 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 wanteth not grammar. "'For grammar it might have, but it 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 conceits 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 that can be in a language now 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 tune observing quantity and more fit lively to express divers passions by the low and 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 other 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 illusions 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 saying to called antepenultima and little more hath the spanish and therefore very gracelessly may they use dactyls the english is subject to none of these defects now for rhyme though we do not observe quantity yet we observe the accent very precisely which other languages either cannot do or will not do so absolutely

that caesura, or breathing place in the midst of the verse, neither Italian nor Spanish have. The French, and we, never almost fail of. Lastly, even the very rhyme itself the Italian cannot put in the last syllable, by the French called the masculine rhyme, but still in the next to the last, which the French call the female, or the next before that, which the Italians call stucciola.

the example of the former is buono suono of the stucciola is femina semina the french on the other side hath both the male as bon son and the female prese tese but the stucciola he hath not

with the english hath all three due true father rather motion potion with much more which might be said but that already i find the triflingness of this discourse is too much enlarged so that since the ever praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue breeding delightfulness and void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning

since the blames laid against it are either false or feeble since the cause why it is not esteemed in england is the fault of poet apes not poets since lastly our tongue is most fit to honour poesy and be honoured by poesy

"'I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of benign muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poetry, no more to laugh at the name of poets as though they were next inheritors to fools, no more to jest at the reverend title of a rhymer, but to believe with Aristotle that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecian's divinity.'

to believe with bemboos that they were first bringers in of all civility to believe with scaliger that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of virchow

to believe with clausurus the translator of cornutus that it pleased the heavenly deity by hesiod and homer under the veil of fables to give us all knowledge logic rhetoric philosophy natural and moral and quid non to believe with me that there are many mysteries contained in poetry which of purpose were written darkly lest by profane wits it should be abused

to believe with undino that they are so beloved of the gods that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury lastly to believe themselves when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses thus doing your name shall flourish in the printers shops thus doing you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface

thus doing you shall be most fair most rich most wise most all you shall dwell upon superlatives thus doing though you be libertino patronatos you shall suddenly grow herculea proles si quid mea carmata possunt note though you be from horace the son of a freedman you shall suddenly grow herculea proles ovid if aught my verse can do virgil eneat return to text

thus doing your soul shall be placed with dantes beatrice or virgils and caisses but here fie of such a butt you be borne so near the dull making cataract of nilus that you cannot hear the planet like music of poetry

if you have so earth creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry or rather by a certain rustical disdain will become such a mome as to be a momus of poetry then so i will not wish unto you the asses years of midas nor to be driven by a poet's verses as bubinac's was to hang himself nor to be rhymed to death as is said to be done in ireland

yet thus much curse i must send you in the behalf of all poets that while you live you live in love and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet and when you die your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph the defence of poetry by thomas copeland

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