WHY WE HAVE NOT WHOLLY NEGLECTED THE FABLES OF THE POETS
All the varieties of attack directed against the poets by the lovers of
naked truth may be repelled by a two-fold defence: either that even in
an unseemly subject-matter we may learn a charming fashion of speech,
or that where a fictitious but becoming subject is handled, natural or
historical truth is pursued under the guise of allegorical fiction.
Although it is true that all men naturally desire knowledge, yet they
do not all take the same pleasure in learning. On the contrary, when
they have experienced the labour of study and find their senses
wearied, most men inconsiderately fling away the nut, before they have
broken the shell and reached the kernel. For man is naturally fond of
two things, namely, freedom from control and some pleasure in his
activity; for which reason no one without reason submits himself to the
control of others, or willingly engages in any tedious task. For
pleasure crowns activity, as beauty is a crown to youth, as Aristotle
truly asserts in the tenth book of the Ethics. Accordingly the wisdom
of the ancients devised a remedy by which to entice the wanton minds of
men by a kind of pious fraud, the delicate Minerva secretly lurking
beneath the mask of pleasure. We are wont to allure children by
rewards, that they may cheerfully learn what we force them to study
even though they are unwilling. For our fallen nature does not tend to
virtue with the same enthusiasm with which it rushes into vice. Horace
has expressed this for us in a brief verse of the Ars Poetica, where he
says:
All poets sing to profit or delight.
And he has plainly intimated the same thing in another verse of the
same book, where he says:
He hits the mark, who mingles joy with use.
How many students of Euclid have been repelled by the Pons Asinorum, as
by a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of ladders could enable
them to scale! THIS IS A HARD SAYING, they exclaim, AND WHO CAN
RECEIVE IT. The child of inconstancy, who ended by wishing to be
transformed into an ass, would perhaps never have given up the study of
philosophy, if he had met him in friendly guise veiled under the cloak
of pleasure; but anon, astonished by Crato's chair and struck dumb by
his endless questions, as by a sudden thunderbolt, he saw no refuge but
in flight.
So much we have alleged in defence of the poets; and now we proceed to
show that those who study them with proper intent are not to be
condemned in regard to them. For our ignorance of one single word
prevents the understanding of a whole long sentence, as was assumed in
the previous chapter. As now the sayings of the saints frequently
allude to the inventions of the poets, it must needs happen that
through our not knowing the poem referred to, the whole meaning of the
author is completely obscured, and assuredly, as Cassiodorus says in
his book Of the Institutes of Sacred Literature: Those things are not
to be considered trifles without which great things cannot come to
pass. It follows therefore that through ignorance of poetry we do not
understand Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Lactantius, Sidonius, and very
many others, a catalogue of whom would more than fill a long chapter.
The Venerable Bede has very clearly discussed and determined this
doubtful point, as is related by that great compiler Gratian, the
repeater of numerous authors, who is as confused in form as he was
eager in collecting matter for his compilation. Now he writes in his
37th section: Some read secular literature for pleasure, taking
delight in the inventions and elegant language of the poets; but others
study this literature for the sake of scholarship, that by their
reading they may learn to detest the errors of the Gentiles and may
devoutly apply what they find useful in them to the use of sacred
learning. Such men study secular literature in a laudable manner. So
far Bede.
Taking this salutary instruction to heart, let the detractors of those
who study the poets henceforth hold their peace, and let not those who
are ignorant of these things require that others should be as ignorant
as themselves, for this is the consolation of the wretched. And
therefore let every man see that his own intentions are upright, and he
may thus make of any subject, observing the limitations of virtue, a
study acceptable to God. And if he have found profit in poetry, as the
great Virgil relates that he had done in Ennius, he will not have done
amiss.