For if it be as I affirm, that no learning is so good as
that which teacheth and moveth to virtue; and that none can both teach
and move thereto so much as poetry: then is the conclusion manifest,
that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed.
And certainly, though a man should grant their first assumption, it
should follow (methinks) very unwillingly, that good is not good,
because better is better. But I still and utterly deny that there is
sprung out of earth a more fruitful knowledge. To the second, therefore,
that they should be the principal liars; I answer paradoxically, but
truly I think, truly; that of all writers under the sun, the poet is
the least liar: and though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar,
the astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape,
when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars.
How often, think you, do the physicians lie, when they aver things
good for sicknesses, which afterwards send Charon a great number of
souls drowned in a potion before they come to his ferry? And no less
of the rest, which take upon them to affirm.
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