For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently, as to
give us _effigiem justi imperii_ the portraiture of a just empire under
the name of Cyrus (as Cicero says of him), made therein an absolute
heroical poem.
So did Heliodorus in his sugared invention of that picture of love in
Theagenes and Chariclea, and yet both these wrote in prose: which I
speak to show, that it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet,
no more than a long gown maketh an advocate: who, though he pleaded
in armour, should be an advocate and no soldier. But it is that feigning
notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful
teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by:
although, indeed, the senate of poets hath chosen verse as their fittest
raiment, meaning, as in matter they passed all in all, so in manner
to go beyond them: not speaking (table-talk fashion, or like men in
a dream) words as they chanceably fall from the mouth, but peyzing
[Footnote: weighing.] each syllable of each word by just proportion
according to the dignity of the subject.
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