So that,
sith the excellencies of it may be so easily and so justly confirmed,
and the low-creeping objections, so soon trodden down; it not being
an art of lies, but of true doctrine: not of effeminateness, but of
notable stirring of courage: not of abusing man's wit, but of
strengthening man's wit: not banished, but honoured by Plato: let us
rather plant more laurels, for to engarland our poets' heads, (which
honour of being laureat, as besides them, only triumphant captains
wear, is a sufficient authority, to show the price they ought to be
had in,) than suffer the ill-favouring breath of such wrong-speakers,
once to blow upon the clear springs of poesy.
But sith I have run so long a career in this matter, methinks, before
I give my pen a full stop, it shall be but a little more lost time,
to inquire, why England, (the mother of excellent minds,) should be
grown so hard a step-mother to poets, who certainly in wit ought to
pass all other: sith all only proceedeth from their wit, being indeed
makers of themselves, not takers of others.
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