And yet I must say that, as I have just cause to make a pitiful
defence of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of
learning is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children, so have I
need to bring some more available proofs: sith the former is by no man
barred of his deserved credit, the silly latter hath had even the names
of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with great danger of civil
war among the muses. And first, truly to all them that professing
learning inveigh against poetry may justly be objected, that they go
very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that which, in the
noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first
light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and
little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges: and will
they now play the hedgehog that, being received into the den, drove
out his host? or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their
parents? Let learned Greece in any of her manifold sciences, be able
to show me one book, before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiodus, all three
nothing else but poets.
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