Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry, as divers poets
have done, neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling
flowers: nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more
lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden: but let
those things alone and go to man, 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: so excellent a man every way, as Virgil's Aneas.
Neither let this be jestingly conceived, because the works of the one
be essential, the other, in imitation or fiction; for any understanding
knoweth the skill of the 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
hath 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.
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