With a sword thou mayest kill thy father,and with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country;so that,as in their calling poets fathers of lies,they said nothing,so in this their argument of abuse,they prove the commendation.
They allege herewith,that before poets began to be in price,our nation had set their heart's delight upon action,and not imagination;rather doing things worthy to be written,than writing things fit to be done.What that before time was,I think scarcely Sphynx can tell;since no memory is so ancient that gives not the precedence to poetry.And certain it is,that,in our plainest homeliness,yet never was the Albion nation without poetry.Marry,this argument,though it be levelled against poetry,yet it is indeed a chain-shot against all learning or bookishness,as they commonly term it.Of such mind were certain Goths,of whom it is written,that having in the spoil of a famous city taken a fair library,one hangman,belike fit to execute the fruits of their wits,who had murdered a great number of bodies,would have set fire in it."No,"said another,very gravely,"take heed what you do,for while they are busy about those toys,we shall with more leisure conquer their countries."This,indeed,is the ordinary doctrine of ignorance,and many words sometimes I have heard spent in it;but because this reason is generally against all learning as well as poetry,or rather all learning but poetry;because it were too large a digression to handle it,or at least too superfluous,since it is manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge,and knowledge best by gathering many knowledges,which is reading,;I only say with Horace,to him that is of that opinion,"Jubeo stultum esse libenter--"{69}for as for poetry itself,it is the freest from this,objection,for poetry is the companion of camps.I dare undertake,Orlando Furioso,or honest King Arthur,will never displease a soldier:but the quiddity of "ens"and "prima materia"will hardly agree with a corslet.And,therefore,as I said in the beginning,even Turks and Tartars are delighted with poets.Homer,a Greek,flourished before Greece flourished;and if to a slight conjecture a conjecture may be opposed,truly it may seem,that as by him their learned men took almost their first light of knowledge,so their active men receive their first notions of courage.Only Alexander's example may serve,who by Plutarch is accounted of such virtue that fortune was not his guide but his footstool;whose acts speak for him,though Plutarch did not;indeed,the phoenix of warlike princes.This Alexander left his schoolmaster,living Aristotle,behind him,but took dead Homer with him.He put the philosopher Callisthenes to death,for his seeming philosophical,indeed mutinous,stubbornness;but the chief thing he was ever heard to wish for was that Homer had been alive.He well found he received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles,than by hearing the definition of fortitude.
And,therefore,if Cato misliked Fulvius for carrying Ennius with him to the field,it may be answered that if Cato misliked it the noble Fulvius liked it,or else he had not done it;for it was not the excellent Cato Uticensis whose authority I would much more have reverenced,but it was the former,in truth a bitter punisher of faults,but else a man that had never sacrificed to the Graces.He misliked,and cried out against,all Greek learning,and yet,being fourscore years old,began to learn it,belike fearing that Pluto understood not Latin.Indeed,the Roman laws allowed no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers'roll.And,therefore,though Cato misliked his unmustered person,he misliked not his work.And if he had,Scipio Nasica (judged by common consent the best Roman)loved him:both the other Scipio brothers,who had by their virtues no less surnames than of Asia and Afric,so loved him that they caused his body to be buried in their sepulture.
So,as Cato's authority being but against his person,and that answered with so far greater than himself,is herein of no validity.
But {70}now,indeed,my burthen is great,that Plato's name is laid upon me,whom,I must confess,of all philosophers I have ever esteemed most worthy of reverence;and with good reason,since of all philosophers he is the most poetical;yet if he will defile the fountain out of which his flowing streams have proceeded,let us boldly examine with what reason he did it.
