And—

“Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper.” {136c}

_Horatius_.—_Lucretius_.—So were Horace’s odes called Carmina, his lyric

songs. And Lucretius designs a whole book in his sixth:—

“Quod in primo quoque carmine claret.” {136d}

_Epicum_.—_Dramaticum_.—_Lyricum_.—_Elegiacum_.—_Epigrammat_.—And

anciently all the oracles were called Carmina; or whatever sentence was

expressed, were it much or little, it was called an Epic, Dramatic,

Lyric, Elegiac, or Epigrammatic poem.

_But how differs a Poem from what we call Poesy_?

_Poesis_.—_Artium regina_.—_Poet.

differentiæ_.—_Grammatic_.—_Logic_.—_Rhetoric_.—_Ethica_.—A poem, as I

have told you, is the work of the poet; the end and fruit of his labour

and study. Poesy is his skill or craft of making; the very fiction

itself, the reason or form of the work. And these three voices differ,

as the thing done, the doing, and the doer; the thing feigned, the

feigning, and the feigner; so the poem, the poesy, and the poet. Now the

poesy is the habit or the art; nay, rather the queen of arts, which had

her original from heaven, received thence from the Hebrews, and had in

prime estimation with the Greeks transmitted to the Latins and all

nations that professed civility. The study of it (if we will trust

Aristotle) offers to mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well

and happily, disposing us to all civil offices of society. If we will

believe Tully, it nourisheth and instructeth our youth, delights our age,

adorns our prosperity, comforts our adversity, entertains us at home,

keeps us company abroad, travels with us, watches, divides the times of

our earnest and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations;

insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute

mistress of manners and nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they

entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the

contrary, styled poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and

guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible

sweetness. But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their special

differences, or make court to the art itself, as a mistress, I would lead

you to the knowledge of our poet by a perfect information what he is or

should be by nature, by exercise, by imitation, by study, and so bring

him down through the disciplines of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and the

ethics, adding somewhat out of all, peculiar to himself, and worthy of

your admittance or reception.

1.

_Ingenium_.—_Seneca_.—_Plato_.—_Aristotle_.—_Helicon_.—_Pegasus_.—

_Parnassus_.—_Ovid_.—First, we require in our poet or maker (for that

title our language affords him elegantly with the Greek) a goodness of

natural wit. For whereas all other arts consist of doctrine and

precepts, the poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the

treasure of his mind, and as Seneca saith, _Aliquando secundum

Anacreontem insanire jucundum esse_; by which he understands the poetical

rapture. And according to that of Plato, _Frustrà poeticas fores sui

compos pulsavit_. And of Aristotle, _Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixturâ

dementiæ fuit_. _Nec potest grande aliquid_, _et supra cæteros loqui_,

_nisi mota mens_. Then it riseth higher, as by a divine instinct, when

it contemns common and known conceptions. It utters somewhat above a

mortal mouth. Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whither

before it was doubtful to ascend. This the poets understood by their

Helicon, Pegasus, or Parnassus; and this made Ovid to boast,

“Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo

Sedibus æthereis spiritus ille venit.” {139a}

_Lipsius_.—_Petron. in. Fragm_.—And Lipsius to affirm, _Scio_, _poetam

neminem præstantem fuisse_, _sine parte quadam uberiore divinæ auræ_.

And hence it is that the coming up of good poets (for I mind not

mediocres or imos) is so thin and rare among us. Every beggarly

corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but _Solus

rex_, _aut poeta_, _non quotannis nascitur_. To this perfection of

nature in our poet we require exercise of those parts, and frequent.

2. _Exercitatio_.—_Virgil_.—_Scaliger_.—_Valer.

Maximus_.—_Euripides_.—_Alcestis_.—If his wit will not arrive suddenly at

the dignity of the ancients, let him not yet fall out with it, quarrel,

or be over hastily angry; offer to turn it away from study in a humour,

but come to it again upon better cogitation; try another time with

labour. If then it succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor

scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge

and file again; torn it anew. There is no statute law of the kingdom

bids you be a poet against your will or the first quarter; if it comes in

a year or two, it is well. The common rhymers pour forth verses, such as

they are, _ex tempore_; but there never comes from them one sense worth

the life of a day. A rhymer and a poet are two things. It is said of

the incomparable Virgil that he brought forth his verses like a bear, and

after formed them with licking. Scaliger the father writes it of him,

that he made a quantity of verses in the morning, which afore night he

reduced to a less number. But that which Valerius Maximus hath left

recorded of Euripides, the tragic poet, his answer to Alcestis, another

poet, is as memorable as modest; who, when it was told to Alcestis that

Euripides had in three days brought forth but three verses, and those

with some difficulty and throes, Alcestis, glorying he could with ease

have sent forth a hundred in the space, Euripides roundly replied, “Like

enough; but here is the difference: thy verses will not last these three

days, mine will to all time.” Which was as much as to tell him he could

not write a verse. I have met many of these rattles that made a noise

and buzzed. They had their hum, and no more. Indeed, things wrote with

labour deserve to be so read, and will last their age.

3.

_Imitatio_.—_Horatius_.—_Virgil_.—_Statius_.—_Homer_.—_Horat_.—_Archil_.—

_Alcæus_, &c.—The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, to

be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own

use. To make choice of one excellent man above the rest, and so to

follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as the copy may be

mistaken for the principal. Not as a creature that swallows what it

takes in crude, raw, or undigested, but that feeds with an appetite, and

hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and turn all into nourishment. Not to

imitate servilely, as Horace saith, and catch at vices for virtue, but to

draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn

all into honey, work it into one relish and savour; make our imitation

sweet; observe how the best writers have imitated, and follow them. How

Virgil and Statius have imitated Homer; how Horace, Archilochus; how

Alcæus, and the other lyrics; and so of the rest.

4. _Lectio_.—_Parnassus_.—_Helicon_.—_Arscoron_.—_M. T.

Cicero_.—_Simylus_.—_Stob_.—_Horat_.—_Aristot_.—But that which we

especially require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity of

reading, which maketh a full man, not alone enabling him to know the

history or argument of a poem and to report it, but so to master the

matter and style, as to show he knows how to handle, place, or dispose of

either with elegancy when need shall be. And not think he can leap forth

suddenly a poet by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus, or having washed

his lips, as they say, in Helicon. There goes more to his making than

so; for to nature, exercise, imitation, and study art must be added to

make all these perfect. And though these challenge to themselves much in

the making up of our maker, it is Art only can lead him to perfection,

and leave him there in possession, as planted by her hand. It is the

assertion of Tully, if to an excellent nature there happen an accession

or conformation of learning and discipline, there will then remain

somewhat noble and singular. For, as Simylus saith in Stobæus, Ουτε

φύσις ίκανη yινεται τεχνης ατερ, ουτε παν τέχνη μη φυσιν κεκτημένη,

without art nature can never be perfect; and without nature art can claim

no being. But our poet must beware that his study be not only to learn

of himself; for he that shall affect to do that confesseth his ever

having a fool to his master. He must read many, but ever the best and

choicest; those that can teach him anything he must ever account his

masters, and reverence. Among whom Horace and (he that taught him)

Aristotle deserved to be the first in estimation. Aristotle was the

first accurate critic and truest judge—nay, the greatest philosopher the

world ever had—for he noted the vices of all knowledges in all creatures,

and out of many men’s perfections in a science he formed still one art.

So he taught us two offices together, how we ought to judge rightly of

others, and what we ought to imitate specially in ourselves. But all

this in vain without a natural wit and a poetical nature in chief. For

no man, so soon as he knows this or reads it, shall be able to write the

better; but as he is adapted to it by nature, he shall grow the perfecter

writer. He must have civil prudence and eloquence, and that whole; not

taken up by snatches or pieces in sentences or remnants when he will

handle business or carry counsels, as if he came then out of the

declaimer’s gallery, or shadow furnished but out of the body of the

State, which commonly is the school of men.

_Virorum schola respub_.—_Lysippus_.—_Apelles_.—_Nævius_.—The poet is the

nearest borderer upon the orator, and expresseth all his virtues, though

he be tied more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and above him in

his strengths. And (of the kind) the comic comes nearest; because in

moving the minds of men, and stirring of affections (in which oratory

shows, and especially approves her eminence), he chiefly excels. What

figure of a body was Lysippus ever able to form with his graver, or

Apelles to paint with his pencil, as the comedy to life expresseth so

many and various affections of the mind? There shall the spectator see

some insulting with joy, others fretting with melancholy, raging with

anger, mad with love, boiling with avarice, undone with riot, tortured

with expectation, consumed with fear; no perturbation in common life but

the orator finds an example of it in the scene. And then for the

elegancy of language, read but this inscription on the grave of a comic

poet:

“Immortales mortales si fas esset fiere,

Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam;

Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,

Obliti sunt Romæ linguâ loqui Latinâ.” {146a}

_L. Ælius Stilo_.—_Plautus_.—_M. Varro_.—Or that modester testimony given

by Lucius Ælius Stilo upon Plautus, who affirmed, “_Musas_, _si Latinè

loqui voluissent_, _Plautino sermone fuisse loquuturas_.” And that

illustrious judgment by the most learned M. Varro of him, who pronounced

him the prince of letters and elegancy in the Roman language.

_Sophocles_.—I am not of that opinion to conclude a poet’s liberty within

the narrow limits of laws which either the grammarians or philosophers

prescribe. For before they found out those laws there were many

excellent poets that fulfilled them, amongst whom none more perfect than

Sophocles, who lived a little before Aristotle.

_Demosthenes_.—_Pericles_.—_Alcibiades_.—Which of the Greeklings durst

ever give precepts to Demosthenes? or to Pericles, whom the age surnamed

Heavenly, because he seemed to thunder and lighten with his language? or

to Alcibiades, who had rather Nature for his guide than Art for his

master?

_Aristotle_.—But whatsoever nature at any time dictated to the most

happy, or long exercise to the most laborious, that the wisdom and

learning of Aristotle hath brought into an art, because he understood the

causes of things; and what other men did by chance or custom he doth by

reason; and not only found out the way not to err, but the short way we

should take not to err.

_Euripides_.—_Aristophanes_.—Many things in Euripides hath Aristophanes

wittily reprehended, not out of art, but out of truth. For Euripides is

sometimes peccant, as he is most times perfect. But judgment when it is

greatest, if reason doth not accompany it, is not ever absolute.

_Cens. Scal. in Lil. Germ_.—_Horace_.—To judge of poets is only the

faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best. _Nemo infeliciùs

de poetis judicavit_, _quàm qui de poetis scripsit_. {148a} But some

will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more faults than they

mend ordinarily. See their diseases and those of grammarians. It is

true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the multitude

of physicians hath destroyed many sound patients with their wrong

practice. But the office of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by

a letter anywhere, or damn an innocent syllable, but lay the words

together, and amend them; judge sincerely of the author and his matter,

which is the sign of solid and perfect learning in a man. Such was

Horace, an author of much civility, and (if any one among the heathen can

be) the best master both of virtue and wisdom; an excellent and true

judge upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, but because he

knew so out of use and experience.