The second kind, is of them that deal with matters philosophical;
either moral, as Tyrtaus, Phocylides, and Cato: or natural, as Lucretius
and Virgil's _Georgics_; or astronomical, as Manilius, and Pontanus;
or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is in their
judgments 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 course of
his own invention, whether they properly be poets or no, let grammarians
dispute; and go to the third, 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 of such a virtue: for these third be they which most
properly do imitate to teach and delight; and, to imitate, borrow
nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be: but range, only reined
with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be,
and should be.
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