A Defence of Poesie and Poems | Page 9

is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
But let those things alone, and go to man; {14} 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 Theagenes; so
constant a friend as Pylades; so valiant a man as Orlando; so right a
prince as Xenophon's Cyrus; and 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 every
understanding knoweth the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea,
or fore-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 had 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 had
been but a particular excellency, as nature might have done; but to
bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many 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 surpassing her doings,
with no small arguments 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 {15} 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
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, {16} therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it
in the word [Greek text]; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or
figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this
end, to teach and delight.
Of {17} this have been three general kinds: the CHIEF, both in
antiquity and excellency, which they that did imitate the

inconceivable excellencies of God; such were David in the Psalms;
Solomon in the Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs;
Moses and Deborah in their hymns; and the writer of Job; which,
beside others, the learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. 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 wrong
divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his hymns, and many
others, both Greeks and Romans. And this poesy must be used by
whosoever will follow St. Paul'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 {18} SECOND kind is of them that deal with matter philosophical;
either moral, as Tyrtaeus, Phocylides, Cato, or, natural, as Lucretius,
Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius {19} 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, {20} 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