But
I have lavished out too many words of this play-matter. I do it because,
as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used
in England, and none can be more pitifully abused. Which like an
unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother poesy's
honesty to be called in question. Other sorts of poetry almost have
we none, but that lyrical kind of songs and sonnets: which Lord, if
he gave us so good minds, how well it might be employed, and with how
heavenly fruit, both private and public, in singing the praises of the
immortal beauty, the immortal goodness of that God, who giveth us hands
to write, and wits to conceive, of which we might well want words, but
never matter, of which we could turn our eyes to nothing, but we should
ever have new budding occasions. But truly many of such writings, as
come under the banner of un-resistible love, if I were a mistress,
would never persuade me they were in love: so coldly they apply fiery
speeches, as men that had rather read lovers' writings, and so caught
up certain swelling phrases, which hang together, like a man which
once told me, the wind was at north, west, and by south, because he
would be sure to name winds enough, than that in truth they feel those
passions, which easily (as I think) may be betrayed by that same
forcibleness, or _energeia_ (as the Greeks call it) of the writer.
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