bear with him, before he proceeds to show that poetry was the first light-giver, borrowed from by historians, honoured by the Romans as sacred and prophetic, and really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David. By the Greeks, he goes on to show, the poet was honoured with the name of Maker, "wherein, I know not whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him 'a maker,' which name, how high and incomparable a title it is, I had rather were known by marking the scope of other sciences than by any partial allegation." Poetry is the one creative art. Astronomers and others repeat what they find. Poets improve Nature and idealise Man.

Having advanced his argument so far, Sidney proceeds to the next opening of his subject. This begins with a definition of poetry, and a division of it into three general kinds. He defines it as an art of imitation: "to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight." Its three kinds are, first, the Divine, that imitates the inconceivable excellences of God. "And this poesy must be used by whosoever will follow Saint Paul's counsel, in singing psalms when they are merry; and I know is used with the fruit of comfort by some, when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness. The second kind is of them that deal with matter Philosophical; either moral, as Tyrtæus, Phocyclides, Cato; or natural, as Lucretius; Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius and Pontanus, or historical, as Lucan." Poets of this sort cannot take the free course of their own invention, and whether they be poets or no, says Sidney, let grammarians dispute. We go to

"The third, indeed right poets, of whom chiefly this question ariseth; betwixt whom and these second is such a kind of difference, as betwixt the meaner sort of painters, who counterfeit only such faces as are set before them, and the more excellent, who having no law but

wit, bestow that in colours upon you which is fittest for the eye to see ; as the constant, though lamenting look of Lucretia, when she punished in herself another's fault, wherein he painteth not Lucretia, whom he never saw, but painteth the outward beauty of such a virtue. For these three be they which most properly do imitate to teach and delight; and to imitate, borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be, but range only, reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be, and should be. These be they that, as the first and most noble sort, may justly be termed "vates"; so these are waited on in the excellentest languages and best understandings with the fore-described name of poets. For these, indeed, do merely make

to imitate, and imitate both to delight and teach; and delight, to move men to take that goodness in hand which, without delight, they would fly as from a stranger; and teach, to make them know that goodness whereunto they are moved; which being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet want there not idle tongues to bark at them."

He sets forth its

Sidney names then the subdivisions of poetry proper, which has, he says, its essence in the thought, not in apparelling of verse. But before dealing with the several parts of poetry, he will consider first the poet's work, and ask what poetry does for us. Poetry, he says, best advances the end. of all earthly learning-virtuous action. advantage herein over Moral Philosophy, over History, and shows by argument in what manner the poet goes beyond philosopher, historian, and all others, bating comparison with the divine. He makes the poet monarch of all human sciences in a passage often quoted, and which is too suggestive of the life in our Elizabethan writers to be left unquoted here—

"Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human and according to the human conceit), is our Poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it; nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste you may long to pass farther. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margin with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulness, but he

cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things, by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste, which, if one should begin to tell them the nature of the aloes or rhubarbarum they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at their mouth. So it is in men (most of them are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in their graves); glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, Æneas; and hearing them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if they had been barely (that is to say, philosophically) set out, they would swear they be brought to school again."

After some instances of the power of the poet's work, Philip Sidney goes on to treat severally of the parts of poetry. Can pastoral be condemned? or elegiac? or iambic? or satiric? or comic? or tragic? or lyric—.

"Is it the lyric that most displeaseth, who with his tuned lyre and well accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds of the immortal God? Certainly, I must confess mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet, and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?"

"There rests the heroical, whose very name, I think, should daunt all backbiters. For by what conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil of that which draweth with him no less champions than Achilles, Cyrus, Æneas, Turnus, Tydeus, Rinaldo? who doth not only teach and move to truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high and excellent truth? who maketh magnanimity and justice shine through all misty fearfulness and foggy desires? who, if the saying of Plato and Tully be true, that who could see virtue would be wonderfully ravished

with the love of her beauty; this man setteth her out to make her more lovely, in her holiday apparel, to the eye of any that will deign not to disdain until they understand. But if anything be already said in the defence of sweet poetry, all concurreth to the maintaining the heroical, which is not only a kind, but the best and most accomplished kind, of poetry. For, as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy."

Then follows a summary of the argument as it has been sustained thus far; and Sidney proceeds next to state and meet objections to the poet's art. He deals with the objections to the use of rhyme and metre, and with the Puritan argument that time might be better spent upon more fruitful knowledge; that poetry is the mother of lies; that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with wanton and pestilent desires; that Plato banished poets from his commonwealth. Sidney ends this section of his "Apologie" with a second summary, and then turns to discussion of the causes of defect in English poetry.

Of defects in the drama, Sidney, writing in 1581, speaks emphatically. Of plays that he has seen, he praises only "Gorboduc," condemning in some degree even in that the neglect, gross in other plays, of unities of time and place. His opinions on this subject will have our attention when we come again to the record of the English drama. Sidney deals with defects in lyric poetry and with defects in diction. Here he condemns the far-fetched words, the coursing of a letter, the figures and

flowers extremely winter-starved. "For now," he says, they cast sugar and spice upon every dish that is served at the table like those Indians, not content to wear earrings at the fit and natural places of the ears, but they will thrust jewels through their nose and lips, because they will be sure to be fine. Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses, I think all herbalists, all stories of beasts,

fowls, and fishes, are rifled up that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our conceits." But a simile proves nothing; it explains to willing ears," and when that is done, the rest is a most tedious prattling." Sidney turns then to praise of his native tongue, as capable of any excellent exercising of it. It lends itself alike to ancient and modern forms of versification, by quantity and accent:

"Whether of these be the more excellent, would bear many speeches; the ancient, no doubt more fit for music, both words and time observing quantity; and more fit lively to express divers passions, by the low or lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable. The latter, likewise, with his rhyme striketh a certain music to the ear; and, in fine, since it doth delight, though by another way, it obtaineth the same purpose; there being in either, sweetness, and wanting in neither, majesty. Truly the English, before any vulgar language I know, is fit for both sorts; for, for the ancient, the Italian is so full of vowels, that it must ever be cumbered with elisions: the Dutch so, of the other side, with consonants, that they cannot yield the sweet sliding fit for a verse. The French, in

his whole language, hath not one word that hath his accent in the last syllable saving two, called antepenultima; and little more hath the Spanish, and therefore very gracelessly may they use dactyls. The English is subject to none of these defects."

Sidney himself, although he tried both ways, chiefly used accented verse with rhyme, and he here shows himself to have been no zealot for "the new manner of versifying," whether by Drant's rules or by ear. And now Sidney's argument proceeds to its last summary, that slides into a peroration playfully suggesting how the poets can immortalise their friends, and wishing to the reader, if he have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, not the ass's ears of Midas; nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets: that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour for