But tell me, man, why valuest thou go high
Th’ unjust beatitude of tyranny?[59]
except, as I said, we allow him the use of these words in a
metaphorical and abusive sense. But enough hath been spoken of these
matters.
7. Nevertheless, this principle is not once only but often to be
inculcated and pressed on young men, that poetry, when it undertakes
a fictitious argument by way of imitation, though it make use of such
ornament and illustration as suit the actions and manners treated
of, yet disclaims not all likelihood of truth, seeing the force of
imitation, in order to the persuading of men, lies in probability.
Wherefore such imitation as does not altogether shake hands with truth
carries along with it certain signs of virtue and vice mixed together
in the actions which it doth represent. And of this nature is Homer’s
poetry, which totally bids adieu to Stoicism, the principles whereof
will not admit any vice to come near where virtue is, nor virtue to
have any thing to do where any vice lodgeth, but affirms that he that
is not a wise man can do nothing well, and he that is so can do nothing
amiss. Thus they determine in the schools. But in human actions and the
affairs of common life the judgment of Euripides is verified, that
Virtue and vice ne’er separately exist,
But in the same acts with each other twist.[60]
Next, it is to be observed that poetry, waiving the truth of things,
does most labor to beautify its fictions with variety and multiplicity
of contrivance. For variety bestows upon fable all that is pathetical,
unusual, and surprising, and thereby makes it more taking and graceful;
whereas what is void of variety is unsuitable to the nature of fable,
and so raiseth no passions at all. Upon which design of variety it
is, that the poets never represent the same persons always victorious
or prosperous or acting with the same constant tenor of virtue;—yea,
even the Gods themselves, when they engage in human actions, are not
represented as free from passions and errors;—lest, for the want of
some difficulties and cross passages, their poems should be destitute
of that briskness which is requisite to move and astonish the minds of
men.
8. These things therefore so standing, we should, when we enter a young
man into the study of the poets, endeavor to free his mind from that
degree of esteem of the good and great personages in them described
as may incline him to think them to be mirrors of wisdom and justice,
the chief of princes, and the exemplary measures of all virtue and
goodness. For he will receive much prejudice, if he shall approve and
admire all that comes from such persons as great, if he dislike nothing
in them himself, nor will endure to hear others blame them, though for
such words and actions as the following passages import:—
Oh! would to all the immortal powers above,
Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!
That not one Trojan might be left alive,
And not a Greek of all the race survive.
Might only we the vast destruction shun,
And only we destroy the accursed town!
Her breast all gore, with lamentable cries,
The bleeding innocent Cassandra dies,
Murdered by Clytemnestra’s faithless hand:
Lie with thy father’s whore, my mother said,
That she th’ old man may loathe; and I obeyed.
Of all the Gods, O father Jove, there’s none
Thus given to mischief but thyself alone.[61]
Our young man is to be taught not to commend such things as these,
no, nor to show the nimbleness of his wit or subtlety in maintaining
an argument by finding out plausible colors and pretences to varnish
over a bad matter. But we should teach him rather to judge that
poetry is an imitation of the manners and lives of such men as are
not perfectly pure and unblamable, but such as are tinctured with
passions, misled by false opinions, and muffled with ignorance; though
oftentimes they may, by the help of a good natural temper, change them
for better qualities. For the young man’s mind, being thus prepared
and disposed, will receive no damage by such passages when he meets
with them in poems, but will on the one side be elevated with rapture
at those things which are well said or done, and on the other, will
not entertain but dislike those which are of a contrary character. But
he that admires and is transported with every thing, as having his
judgment enslaved by the esteem he hath for the names of heroes, will
be unawares wheedled into many evil things, and be guilty of the same
folly with those who imitate the crookedness of Plato or the lisping
of Aristotle. Neither must he carry himself timorously herein, nor,
like a superstitious person in a temple, tremblingly adore all he meets
with; but use himself to such confidence as may enable him openly to
pronounce, This was ill or incongruously said, and, That was bravely
and gallantly spoken. For example, Achilles in Homer, being offended at
the spinning out that war by delays, wherein he was desirous by feats
of arms to purchase to himself glory, calls the soldiers together when
there was an epidemical disease among them. But having himself some
smattering skill in physic, and perceiving after the ninth day, which
useth to be decretory in such cases, that the disease was no usual one
nor proceeding from ordinary causes, when he stands up to speak, he
waives applying himself to the soldiers, and addresseth himself as a
councillor to the general, thus:—
Why leave we not the fatal Trojan shore,
And measure back the seas we cross’d before?[62]
And he spake well, and with due moderation and decorum. But when the
soothsayer Chalcas had told him that he feared the wrath of the most
potent among the Grecians, after an oath that while he lived no man
should lay violent hands on him, he adds, but not with like wisdom and
moderation,
Not e’en the chief by whom our hosts are led,
The king of kings, shall touch that sacred head;
in which speech he declares his low opinion or rather his contempt of
his chief commander. And then, being farther provoked, he drew his
weapon with a design to kill him, which attempt was neither good nor
expedient. And therefore by and by he repented his rashness,—
He said, observant of the blue-eyed maid;
Then in the sheath returned the shining blade;
wherein again he did rightly and worthily, in that, though he could not
altogether quell his passion, yet he restrained and reduced it under
the command of reason, before it brake forth into such an irreparable
act of mischief. Again, even Agamemnon himself talks in that assembly
ridiculously, but carries himself more gravely and more like a prince
in the matter of Chryseis. For whereas Achilles, when his Briseis was
taken away from him,
In sullenness withdraws from all his friends,
And in his tent his time lamenting spends;
Agamemnon himself hands into the ship, delivers to her friends, and so
sends from him, the woman concerning whom a little before he declared
that he loved her better than his wife; and in that action did nothing
unbecoming or savoring of fond affection. Also Phoenix, when his father
bitterly cursed him for having to do with one that was his own harlot,
says,
Him in my rage I purposed to have killed,
But that my hand some God in kindness held;
And minded me that Greeks would taunting say,
Lo, here’s the man that did his father slay.
It is true that Aristarchus was afraid to permit these verses to stand
in the poet, and therefore censured them to be expunged. But they were
inserted by Homer very aptly to the occasion of Phoenix’s instructing
Achilles what a pernicious thing anger is, and what foul acts men do by
its instigation, while they are capable neither of making use of their
own reason nor of hearing the counsel of others. To which end he also
introduceth Meleager at first highly offended with his citizens, and
afterwards pacified; justly therein reprehending disordered passions,
and praising it as a good and profitable thing not to yield to them,
but to resist and overcome them, and to repent when one hath been
overcome by them.
Now in these instances the difference is manifest. But where a like
clear judgment cannot be passed, there we are to settle the young
man’s mind thus, by way of distinction. If Nausicaa, having cast her
eyes upon Ulysses, a stranger, and feeling the same passion for him as
Calypso had before, did (as one that was ripe for a husband) out of
wantonness talk with her maidens at this foolish rate,—
O Heaven! in my connubial hour decree
This man my spouse, or such a spouse as he![63]
she is blameworthy for her impudence and incontinence. But if,
perceiving the man’s breeding by his discourse, and admiring the
prudence of his addresses, she rather wisheth to have such a one for a
husband than a merchant or a dancing gallant of her fellow-citizens,
she is to be commended. And when Ulysses is represented as rejoicing
at Penelope’s jocular conversation with her wooers, and at their
presenting her with rich garments and other ornaments,
Because she cunningly the fools cajoled.
And bartered light words for their heavy gold;[64]
if that joy were occasioned by greediness and covetousness, he
discovers himself to be a more sordid prostituter of his own wife than
Poliager is wont to be represented on the stage to have been, of whom
it is said,—
Happy man he, whose wife, like Capricorn,
Stores him with riches from a golden horn!
But if through foresight he thought thereby to get them the more within
his power, as being lulled asleep in security for the future by the
hopes she gave them at present, this rejoicing, joined with confidence
in his wife, was rational. Again, when he is brought in numbering the
goods which the Phaeacians had set on shore together with himself and
departed; if indeed, being himself left in such a solitude, so ignorant
where he was, and having no security there for his own person, he is
yet solicitous for his goods, lest
The sly Phaeacians, when they stole to sea,
Had stolen some part of what they brought away;[65]
the covetousness of the man deserved in truth to be pitied, or
rather abhorred. But if, as some say in his defence, being doubtful
whether or no the place where he was landed were Ithaca, he made use
of the just tale of his goods to infer thence the honesty of the
Phaeacians,—because it was not likely they would expose him in a
strange place and leave him there with his goods by him untouched, so
as to get nothing by their dishonesty,—then he makes use of a very fit
test for this purpose, and deserves commendation for his wisdom in
that action. Some also there are who find fault with that passage of
the putting him on shore when he was asleep, if it really so happened,
and they tell us that the people of Tuscany have still a traditional
story among them concerning Ulysses, that he was naturally sleepy, and
therefore a man whom many men could not freely converse with. But if
his sleep was but feigned, and he made use of this pretence only of
a natural infirmity, by counterfeiting a nap, to hide the strait he
was in at that time in his thoughts, betwixt the shame of sending away
the Phaeacians without giving them a friendly collation and hospitable
gifts, and the fear he had of being discovered to his enemies by the
treating such a company of men together, they then approve it.
Now, by showing young men these things, we shall preserve them from
being carried away to any corruption in their manners, and dispose
them to the election and imitation of those that are good, as being
before instructed readily to disapprove those and commend these. But
this ought with the most care to be done in the reading of tragedies
wherein probable and subtle speeches are made use of in the most foul
and wicked actions. For that is not always true which Sophocles saith,
that
From naughty acts good words can ne’er proceed.
For even he himself is wont to apply pleasant reasonings and plausible
arguments to those manners and actions which are wicked or unbecoming.
And in another of his fellow-tragedians, we may see even Phaedra
herself represented as justifying her unlawful affection for Hippolytus
by accusing Theseus of ill-carriage towards her. And in his Troades,
he allows Helen the same liberty of speech against Hecuba, whom she
judgeth to be more worthy of punishment than herself for her adultery,
because she was the mother of Paris that tempted her thereto. A young
man therefore must not be accustomed to think any thing of that nature
handsomely or wittily spoken, nor to be pleased with such colorable
inventions; but rather more to abhor such words as tend to the defence
of wanton acts than the very acts themselves.
9. And lastly, it will be useful likewise to enquire into the cause why
each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont
to be very observant of all his master’s commands, yet withal used to
ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be
obeyed as pedagogues and lawgivers are, except they have reason to back
what they say. And that they will not want, when they speak well; and
if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and frivolous. But
nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason of such trivial
speeches as these, and enquire in what sense they are spoken:
It bodes ill luck, when vessels you set up,
To place the ladle on the mixing-cup.
Who from his chariot to another’s leaps,
Seldom his seat without a combat keeps.[66]
But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination,
as to those that follow:
The boldest men are daunted oftentimes,
When they’re reproached with their parents’ crimes:[67]
When any man is crushed by adverse fate,
His spirit should be low as his estate.
And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men’s lives
by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except
they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: “Wherefore
is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should
have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle
against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low
circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and
foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently
upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited
because of my father’s defects?” For he that can encounter such
speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to
be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of
Heraclitus, that
Whate’er is said, though void of sense and wit,
The size of a fool’s intellect doth fit,
will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.
10. These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the
hurt we might get by the study of poems. Now, as on a vine the
fruit oftentimes lies shadowed and hidden under its large leaves
and luxuriant branches, so in the poet’s phrases and fictions that
encompass them there are also many profitable and useful things
concealed from the view of young men. This, however, ought not to be
suffered; nor should we be led away from things themselves thus, but
rather adhere to such of them as tend to the promoting of virtue and
the well forming of our manners. It will not be altogether useless
therefore, to treat briefly in the next place of passages of that
nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving
all longer discourses, and the trimming up and furnishing them with
a multitude of instances, to those who write more for show and
ostentation.
First, therefore, let our young man be taught to understand good and
bad manners and persons, and from thence apply his mind to the words
and deeds which the poet decently assigns to either of them. For
example, Achilles, though in some wrath, speaks to Agamemnon thus
decently:
Nor, when we take a Trojan town, can I
With thee in spoils and splendid prizes vie;[68]
whereas Thersites to the same person speaks reproachfully in this
manner:—
’Tis thine whate’er the warrior’s breast inflames,
The golden spoil, and thine the lovely dames.
With all the wealth our wars and blood bestow,
Thy tents are crowded and thy chests o’erflow.