happily, disposing us to all civil offices of society. If we
will believe Tully, it nourisheth and instructeth our youth,
delights our age, adorns our prosperity, comforts our ad-
versity, entertains us at home, keeps us company abroad,
travels with us, watches, divides the times of our earnest 5
and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations;
insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought
her the absolute mistress of manners and nearest of kin
to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a
rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the contrary, styled
poesy a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on
and guides us by the hand to action with a ravishing
delight and incredible sweetness. But before we handle
the kinds of poems, with their special differences, or
make court to the art itself as a mistress, I would lead 15
you to the knowledge of our poet by a perfect informa-
tion what he is or should be by nature, by exercise, by
imitation, by study, and so bring him down through the
disciplines of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and the ethics,
adding somewhat out of all, peculiar to himself, and 20
worthy of your admittance or reception.

First, we require in our poet or maker (for that title
our language affords him elegantly with the Greek) a
goodness of natural wit, ingenium. For whereas all other
arts consist of doctrine and precepts, the poet must 25
be able by nature and instinct to pour out the treasure
of his mind, and as Seneca saith, Aliquando secundum
Anacreontem insanire jucundum esse; by which he
understands the poetical rapture. And according to
that of Plato, Frustra poeticas fores sui compos pulsavit. 30
And of Aristotle, Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura
dementia fuit. Nec potest grande aliquid, et supra cæteros
loqui, nisi mota mens. Then it riseth higher, as by a
divine instinct, when it contemns common and known
conceptions. It utters somewhat above a mortal mouth. 35

5

Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whither before it was doubtful to ascend. This the poets understood by their Helicon, Pegasus, or Parnassus; and this made Ovid to boast,

Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo:
Sedibus æthereis spiritus ille venit.

And Lipsius to affirm, "Scio poetam neminem præstantem fuisse, sine parte quadam uberiore divinæ aura." And hence it is that the coming up of good poets (for 10 I mind not mediocres or imos) is so thin and rare among us. Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur.

To this perfection of nature in our poet we require 15 exercise of those parts, exercitatio, and frequent. If his wit will not arrive suddenly at the dignity of the ancients, let him not yet fall out with it, quarrel, or be over hastily angry, offer to turn it away from study in a humor; but come to it again upon better cogitation, try another time 20 with labor. If then it succeed not, cast not away the

quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; torn it anew. There is no statute law of the kingdom bids you be a poet against your will or the first quarter; if it comes 25 in a year or two, it is well. The common rimers pour

forth verses, such as they are, ex tempore; but there never come[s] from them one sense worth the life of a day. A rimer and a poet are two things. It is said of the incomparable Virgil that he brought forth his verses like 30 a bear, and after formed them with licking. Scaliger the father writes it of him, that he made a quantity of verses in the morning, which afore night he reduced to a less number. But that which Valerius Maximus hath left recorded of Euripides, the tragic poet, his answer to

Alcestis, another poet, is as memorable as modest; who, when it was told to Alcestis that Euripides had in three days brought forth but three verses, and those with some difficulty and throes, Alcestis, glorying he could with ease have sent forth a hundred in the space, Euripides roundly 5 replied, "Like enough; but here is the difference: thy verses will not last those three days, mine will to all time.” Which was as much as to tell him he could not write a verse. I have met many of these rattles that made a noise and buzzed. They had their hum, and no more. 10 Indeed, things wrote with labor deserve to be so read, and will last their age.

The third requisite in our poet or maker is imitation, imitatio, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use. To make choice of one 15 excellent man above the rest, and so to follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as the copy may be mistaken for the principal. Not as a creature that swallows what it takes in, crude, raw, or undigested; but that feeds with an appetite, and hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and 20 turn all into nourishment. Not to imitate servilely, as Horace saith, and catch at vices for virtue, but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savor; make our imitation sweet; observe how the best writers 25 have imitated, and follow them: how Virgil and Statius have imitated Homer; how Horace, Archilochus; how Alcæus, and the other lyrics; and so of the rest.

But that which we especially require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity of reading, lectio, which 30 maketh a full man, not alone enabling him to know the history or argument of a poem and to report it, but so to master the matter and style, as to show he knows how to handle, place, or dispose of either with elegancy when need shall be. And not think he can leap forth suddenly 35

a poet by dreaming he hath been in Parnassus, or having washed his lips, as they say, in Helicon. There goes more

Xto

to his making than so; for to nature, exercise, imitation, and study art must be added to make all these perfect. 5 Ars coron [at opus]. And though these challenge to themselves much in the making up of our maker, it is art only can lead him to perfection, and leave him there in possession, as planted by her hand.//It is the assertion of Tully, if to an excellent nature there happen an accession or con10 formation of learning and discipline, there will then remain somewhat noble and singular. For, as Simylus saith in Stobæus, Οὔτε φύσις ἱκανὴ γίνεται τέχνης ἄτερ, οὔτε πᾶν τέχνη μὴ φύσιν κεκτημένη, without art nature can never be perfect; and without nature art can claim no being. But 15 our poet must beware that his study be not only to learn of himself; for he that shall affect to do that confesseth his ever having a fool to his master. He must read many, but ever the best and choicest; those that can teach him anything he must ever account his masters, and reverence. 20 Among whom Horace and he that taught him, Aristotle, deserved to be the first in estimation. Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge, nay, the greatest 'philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges in all creatures, and out of many men's 25 perfections in a science he formed still one art. So he taught us two offices together, how we ought to judge rightly of others, and what we ought to imitate specially in ourselves but all this in vain without a natural wit and a poetical nature in chief. For no man, so soon as he 30 knows this or reads it, shall be able to write the better; but as he is adapted to it by nature, he shall grow the perfecter writer. He must have civil prudence and eloquence, and that whole, not taken up by snatches or pieces in sentences or remnants when he will handle business or 35 carry counsels, as if he came then out of the declaimer's

gallery, or shadow furnished but out of the body of the
State, which commonly is the school of men: Virorum
schola respublica]. The poet is the nearest borderer
upon the orator, and expresseth all his virtues, though he
be tied more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and 5
above him in his strengths. And of the kind the comic
comes nearest; because in moving the minds of men, and
stirring of affections, in which oratory shows, and especially
approves her eminence, he chiefly excels. What figure of
a body was Lysippus ever able to form with his graver, or o
Apelles to paint with his pencil, as the comedy to life
expresseth so many and various affections of the mind?
There shall the spectator see some insulting with joy,
others fretting with melancholy, raging with anger, mad
with love, boiling with avarice, undone with riot, tortured 15
with expectation, consumed with fear: no perturbation in
common life but the orator finds an example of it in the
scene. And then for the elegancy of language, read but
this inscription on the grave of a comic poet :

Immortales mortales si fas esset flere,
Flerent divæ Camoenæ Nævium poetam;

Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romæ lingua loqui Latina.

20

Or that modester testimony given by Lucius Ælius Stilo upon Plautus, who affirmed, Musas, si Latine loqui 25 voluissent, Plautino sermone fuisse locuturas." And that illustrious judgment by the most learned M[arcus] Varro of him, who pronounced him the prince of letters and elegancy in the Roman language.

I am not of that opinion to conclude a poet's liberty 30 within the narrow limits of laws which either the grammarians or philosophers prescribe. For before they found out those laws there were many excellent poets that fulfilled them, amongst whom none more perfect