It is the
same quality that moves him in the ballads and romances of the moderns.
"Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness; I never heard the old
song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than
with a trumpet." And again: "Truly I have known men that, even with
reading _Amadis de Gaule_ (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect
poesy), have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy,
liberality, and especially courage." The man who wrote these words had
no starved conception of what poetry should be.
Once again. Sidney has small patience with those who would limit art
by the banishment of all that recalls the baser side of life. "Now,
as in geometry, the oblique must be known as well as the right. So in
the actions of our life, who seeth not the filthiness of evil, wanteth
a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue. This doth the comedy
handle so ... as with hearing it we get, as it were, an experience....
So that the right use of comedy will, I think, by no body be blamed."
No doubt, the moral aspect of comedy is here marked with what must be
called immoderate stress.
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