].
But truly I imagine, it falleth out with these poet-whippers, as with
some good women, who often are sick, but in faith they cannot tell
where. So the name of poetry is odious to them; but neither his cause,
nor effects, neither the sum that contains him, nor the particularities
descending from him, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise.
Sith then poetry is of all human learning the most ancient, and of
most fatherly antiquity, as from whence other learnings have taken
their beginnings: sith it is so universal, that no learned nation doth
despise it, nor no barbarous nation is without it: sith both Roman and
Greek gave divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of
making: and that indeed that name of making is fit for him; considering,
that whereas other arts retain themselves within their subject, and
receive, as it were, their being from it, the poet only bringeth his
own stuff, and doth not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh
matter for a conceit: sith neither his description, nor his end,
containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil: sith his
effects be so good as to teach goodness and to delight the learners:
sith therein (namely, in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges),
he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well-
nigh comparable to the philosopher: and for moving, leaves him behind
him: sith the Holy Scripture (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath
whole parts in it poetical: and that even our Saviour Christ vouchsafed
to use the flowers of it: sith all his kinds are not only in their
united forms, but in their severed dissections fully commendable, I
think (and think I think rightly), the laurel crown, appointed for
triumphing captains, doth worthily (of all other learnings) honour the
poet's triumph.
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