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 lateat virtus proximitate mali,_
that good lie hid in nearness of the evil: Agrippa will be as merry
in showingthe 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 humours 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 considers 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 treasurer 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 word cannot be lost,
but the whole work fails: which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance
back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one word
so as it were begetting another, as be it in rhyme or measured verse,
by the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower. Lastly,
even they that have taught the art of memory have showed nothing so
apt for it, as a certain room divided into many places well and
thoroughly known. Now, that hath the verse in effect perfectly: every
word having his natural seat, which seat must needs make the words
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 [Footnote: The moralist. His elegiacs are
constantly quoted by medieval writers, _e.g._ in _Piers Plowman_.],
which in his youth he learned, and even to his old age serve him for
hourly lessons? 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 imputations laid to the poor poets;
for aught I can yet learn, they are these: first, that there being
many other more fruitful knowledges, a man might better spend his time
in them, than in this. Secondly, that it is the mother of lies. Thirdly,
that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires:
with a siren's sweetness, drawing the mind to the serpent's tail of
sinful fancy. And herein especially, comedies give the largest field
to err, 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 outshot 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_. 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 poetry: 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 affirms, 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 writes.
He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry
calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention: in truth,
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 Asop
lied in the tales of his beasts: for who thinks that Asop 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's age, to know that the poet's
persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and not stories
what have been, they will never give the lie to things not
affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively, written. And
therefore as in history, looking for truth, they go away full fraught
with falsehood: so in poesy, looking for fiction, they shall use the
narration but as an imaginative groundplot 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,
proves a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie, then, when under the names
of John a stile and John a noakes, he puts 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 or Aneas no other way than
to show what men of their fames, fortunes, and estates should do.
Their third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, training it to wanton
sinfulness and lustful love; for indeed that is the principal, 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 could either put thee away or
yield good reason why they keep thee. But grant love of beauty to be
a beastly fault, although it be very hard, sith 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 they list) scurrility,
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 _eikastike_, which some learned have defined, figuring forth good
things) to be fantastic: 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 poesy may
not only be abused, but that, being abused by the reason of his sweet
charming force, it can do more hurt than any other army of words: yet
shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse should give reproach
to the abused, that contrariwise it is a good reason that whatsoever
being abused, doth most harm, being rightly used (and upon the right
use each thing conceiveth 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 to the highest) God's word, abused, breed
heresy? and His name abused, become blasphemy? Truly a needle cannot
do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it
cannot do much good. With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and
with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country. So that, as
in their calling poets 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: sith 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. Marry, 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 spoils 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 on 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: (sith 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,
_Jubeo stultum esse libenter:_
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 _ens_ and _prima materia_
will hardly agree with a corslet; and therefore, as I said in the
beginning, even Turks and Tartars are delighted with poets. Homer, a
Greek, flourished before Greece flourished. And if to a slight
conjecture a conjecture may be opposed, truly it may seem that, as by
him their learned men took almost their first light of knowledge, so
their active men 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 Calisthenes
to death for his seeming philosophical, indeed mutinous stubbornness.
But the chief thing he ever was 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 [Footnote: Cato the Censor]: in
truth, a bitter punisher of faults, but else a man that had never well
sacrificed to the Graces. He misliked and cried out upon all Greek
learning, and yet, being 80 years old, began to learn it. Belike,
fearing that Pluto understood not Latin. Indeed, the Roman laws allowed
no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers'
roll; and therefore, though Cato misliked his unmustered person, he
misliked not his work. And if he had, Scipio Nasica, judged by common
consent the best Roman, loved him. Both the other Scipio brothers, who
had by their virtues no less surnames than of Asia and Affrick, so
loved him that they caused his body to be buried in their sepulchre.
So as Cato, his 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; now Plato his name is laid upon
me, whom I must confess, of all philosophers, I have ever esteemed
most worthy of reverence, and with great reason, sith 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 strove who should have him for their
citizen: where many cities banished philosophers, as not fit members
to live among them. For only repeating certain of Euripides' verses,
many Athenians had their lives saved of the Syracusians: [Footnote:
The story is told in _Balaustion's Adventure_.] when the Athenians
themselves thought many philosophers unworthy to live.
Certain poets, as Simonides and Pindarus had so prevailed with Hiero
the first, that of a tyrant they made him a just king, where Plato
could do so little with Dionysius, that he himself, of a philosopher,
was made a slave. But who should do thus, I confess, should requite
the objections made against poets, with like cavillation 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 did
banish them? in sooth, thence where he himself alloweth community of
women: so as, belike, this banishment grew not for effeminate
wantonness, sith 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 watch-word
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 superstitiously observed, and truly, (sith they had
not the light of Christ,) did much better in it than the philosophers,
who, shaking off superstition, brought in atheism. Plato therefore,
(whose authority I had much rather justly construe, than unjustly
resist,) meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius
Scaliger saith _qua auctoritate barbari quidam atque hispidi abuti
velint, ad poetas e republica exigendos_: 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 to 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 (sith 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, sith 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 aforenamed dialogue is apparent.
Of the other side, who would show the honours have been by the best
sort of judgments granted them, a whole sea of examples would present
themselves. Alexanders, Caesars, Scipios, all favourers of poets.
Lalius, called the Roman Socrates, himself a poet: so as part of
_Heautontimorumenos_ 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 Asop's
fables into verses. And therefore, full evil should it become his
scholar Plato to put such words in his master's mouth against poets.
But what need more? Aristotle writes the Art of Poesy: and why if it
should not be written? Plutarch teacheth the use to be gathered of
them, and how if they should not be read? And who reads Plutarch's
either history or philosophy, shall find he trimmeth both their garments
with guards of poesy. But I list not to defend poesy, with the help
of her 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,
sith 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
honour of being laureat, as besides them, only triumphant captains
wear, is a sufficient authority, to show the price they ought to be
had in,) than suffer the ill-favouring breath of such wrong-speakers,
once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy.
But sith I have run so long a career in this matter, methinks, before
I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but a little more lost time,
to inquire, why England, (the mother of excellent minds,) should be
grown so hard a step-mother to poets, who certainly in wit ought to
pass all other: sith all only proceedeth from their wit, being indeed
makers of themselves, not takers of others. How can I but exclaim,
_Musa mihi causas memora, quo numine laso,_