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translated in Sejanus and Catiline. But he has done his Robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not
to be taxed by any Law. He invades Authors like a Monarch, and what would be theft in other Poets, is
only victory in him. With the spoils of these Writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its Rites,
Ceremonies and Customs, that if one of their Poets had written either of his Tragedies, we had seen less
of it than in him. If there was any fault in his Language, ’twas that he weaved it too closely and
laboriously in his serious Plays; perhaps too, he did a little too much Romanize our Tongue, leaving the
words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them: wherein though he learnedly followed
the Idiom of their language, he did not enough comply with ours. If I would compare him with
Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct Poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit.
Shakespeare was the Homer, or Father of our Dramatick Poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of
elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us the most
correct Plays, so in the precepts which he has laid down in his Discoveries, we have as many and
profitable Rules for perfecting the Stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us.

THE DEFENCE OF POESY

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
But since the authors of most of our sciences were the Romans, and before them the Greeks, let us, a
little, stand upon their authorities; but even so far, as to see what names they have given unto this now
scorned skill. Among the Romans a poet was called “vates,” which is as much as a diviner, foreseer, or
prophet, as by his conjoined words “vaticinium,” and “vaticinari,” is manifest; so heavenly a title did that
excellent people bestow upon this heart-ravishing knowledge! And so far were they carried into the
admiration thereof, that they thought in the changeable hitting upon any such verses, great foretokens of
their following fortunes were placed. Whereupon grew the word of sortes Virgilianæ; when, by sudden
opening Virgil’s book, they lighted upon some verse, as it is reported by many, whereof the histories of
the Emperors’ lives are full. As of Albinus, the governor of our island, who, in his childhood, met with
this verse—
Arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis
and in his age performed it. Although it were a very vain and godless superstition; as also it was, to think
spirits were commanded by such verses; whereupon this word charms, derived of “carmina,” cometh, so
yet serveth it to show the great reverence those wits were held in; and altogether not without ground,
since both the oracles of Delphi and the Sibyl’s prophecies were wholly delivered in verses; for that same
exquisite observing of number and measure in the words, and that high-flying liberty of conceit proper to
the poet, did seem to have some divine force in it.
And may not I presume a little farther to show the reasonableness of this word “vates,” and say, that the
holy David’s Psalms are a divine poem? If I do, I shall not do it without the testimony of great learned
men, both ancient and modern. But even the name of Psalms will speak for me, which, being interpreted,
is nothing but Songs; then, that is fully written in metre, as all learned Hebricians agree, although the
rules be not yet fully found. Lastly, and principally, his handling his prophecy, which is merely poetical.
For what else is the awaking his musical instruments; the often and free changing of persons; his notable
prosopopoeias, when he maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty; his telling of the beasts’
joyfulness, and hills leaping; but a heavenly poesy, wherein, almost, he sheweth himself a passionate
lover of that unspeakable and everlasting beauty, to be seen by the eyes of the mind, only cleared by
faith? But truly, now, having named him, I fear I seem to profane that holy name, applying it to poetry,
which is, among us, thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation. But they that, with quiet judgments, will
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look a little deeper into it, shall find the end and working of it such, as, being rightly applied, deserveth
not to be scourged out of the church of God.
But now let us see how the Greeks have named it, and how they deemed of it. The Greeks named him
ποιητὴν, which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through other languages; it cometh of this word
ποιεὶν, which is to make; 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. There is no art
delivered unto mankind that hath not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they
could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what
nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth set down what
order nature hath taken therein. So doth the geometrician and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of
quantities. So doth the musician, in times, tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural
philosopher thereon hath his name; and the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, or
passions of man; and follow nature, saith he, therein, and thou shalt not err. The lawyer saith what men
have determined. The historian, what men have done. The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of
speech; and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in nature will soonest prove and persuade,
thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed within the circle of a question, according to the
proposed matter. The physician weigheth the nature of man’s body, and the nature of things helpful and
hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic, though it be in the second and abstract notions, and therefore be
counted supernatural, yet doth he, indeed, build upon the depth of nature. Only the poet, disdaining to be
tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into
another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms such as
never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth
hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within
the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done;
neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the
too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
But let those things alone, and go to man; for whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her
uttermost cunning is employed; and know, whether she have brought forth so true a lover as Theagenes;
so constant a friend as Pylades; so valiant a man as Orlando; so right a prince as Xenophon’s Cyrus; and
so excellent a man every way as Virgil’s Æneas? Neither let this be jestingly conceived, because the
works of the one be essential, the other in imitation or fiction; for every understanding knoweth the skill
of each artificer standeth in that idea, or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself. And that the
poet hath that idea is manifest by delivering them forth in such excellency as he had imagined them;
which delivering forth, also, is not wholly imaginative, as we are wont to say by them that build castles in
the air; but so far substantially it worketh not only to make a Cyrus, which had been but a particular
excellency, as nature might have done; but to bestow a Cyrus upon the world to make many Cyruses; if
they will learn aright, why, and how, that maker made him. Neither let it be deemed too saucy a
comparison to balance the highest point of man’s wit with the efficacy of nature; but rather give right
honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker, who having made man to His own likeness, set him beyond
and over all the works of that second nature; which in nothing he showeth so much as in poetry; when,
with the force of a divine breath, he bringeth things forth surpassing her doings, with no small arguments
to the incredulous of that first accursed fall of Adam; since our erected wit maketh us know what
perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it. But these arguments will by few
be understood, and by fewer granted; thus much I hope will be given me, that the Greeks, with some
probability of reason, gave him the name above all names of learning.
Now let us go to a more ordinary opening of him, that the truth may be the more palpable; and so, I hope,
though we get not so unmatched a praise as the etymology of his names will grant, yet his very
description, which no man will deny, shall not justly be barred from a principal commendation.
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Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word μίμησις; that is to say, a
representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end,
to teach and delight.
Of this have been three general kinds: the chief, both in antiquity and excellency, which they that did
imitate the inconceivable excellencies of God; such were David in the Psalms; Solomon in the Song of
Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs; Moses and Deborah in their hymns; and the writer of Job;
which, beside others, the learned Emanuel Tremellius and Fr. Junius do entitle the poetical part of the
scripture; against these none will speak that hath the Holy Ghost in due holy reverence. In this kind,
though in a wrong divinity, were Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his hymns, and many others, both Greeks
and Romans. And this poesy must be used by whosoever will follow St. 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, Phocylides,
Cato, or, natural, as Lucretius, Virgil’s Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius and Pontanus; or
historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is in their judgment, quite out of taste, and not in the
sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge.
But because this second sort is wrapped within the fold of the proposed subject, and takes not the free
course of his own invention; whether they properly be poets or no, let grammarians dispute, and 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.
These be subdivided into sundry more special denominations; the most notable be the heroic, lyric, tragic,
comic, satyric, iambic, elegiac, pastoral, and certain others; some of these being termed according to the
matter they deal with; some by the sort of verse they like best to write in; for, indeed, the greatest part of
poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of writing which is called verse.
Indeed, but apparelied verse, being but an ornament, and no cause to poetry, since there have been many
most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the
name of poets. For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem justi imperii, the
portraiture of a just of Cyrus, as Cicero saith of him, made therein an absolute heroical poem. So did
Heliodorus, in his sugared invention of Theagenes and Chariclea; and yet both these wrote in prose;
which I speak to show, that it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet (no more than a long gown
maketh an advocate, who, though he pleaded in armour should be an advocate and no soldier); but it is
that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be
the right describing note to know a poet by. Although, indeed, the senate of poets have chosen verse as
their fittest raiment; meaning, as in matter they passed all in all, so in manner to go beyond them; not
speaking table-talk fashion, or like men in a dream, words as they changeably fall from the mouth, but
piecing each syllable of each word by just proportion, according to the dignity of the subject.
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Now, therefore, it shall not be amiss, first, to weight this latter sort of poetry by his works, and then by
his parts; and if in neither of these anatomies he be commendable, I hope we shall receive a more
favourable sentence. This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and
enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning under what name soever it come forth, or to what
immediate end soever it be directed; the final end is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our
degenerate souls, made worse by, their clay lodgings, can be capable of. This, according to the
inclination of man, bred many formed impressions; for some that thought this felicity principally to be
gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to be so high or heavenly as to be acquainted with the stars, gave
themselves to astronomy; others, persuading themselves to be demi-gods, if they knew the causes of
things, became natural and supernatural philosophers. Some an admirable delight drew to music, and
some the certainty of demonstrations to the mathematics; but all, one and other, having this scope to
know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine
essence. But when, by the balance of experience, it was found that the astronomer, looking to the stars,
might fall in a ditch; that the enquiring philosopher might be blind in himself; and the mathematician
might draw forth a straight line with a crooked heart; then lo! did proof, the over-ruler of opinions, make
manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private end in themselves, so yet are
they all directed to the highest end of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called ἀρχιτεκτονικὴ, which
stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man’s self; in the ethic and politic consideration, with the end of
well doing, and not of well knowing only; even as the saddler’s next end is to make a good saddle, but his
farther end to serve a nobler faculty, which is horsemanship; so the horseman’s to soldiery; and the
soldier not only to have the skill, but to perform the practice of a soldier. So that the ending end of all
earthly learning being virtuous action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that have a most just title
to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show it rightly, the poet is worthy to have it before any
other competitors.
Among whom principally to challenge it, step forth the moral philosophers; whom, methinks, I see
coming toward me with a sullen gravity (as though they could not abide vice by daylight), rudely clothed,
for to witness outwardly their contempt of outward things, with books in their hands against glory,
whereto they set their names; sophistically speaking against subtlety, and angry with any man in whom
they see the foul fault of anger. These men, casting largesses as they go, of definitions, divisions, and
distinctions, with a scornful interrogative do soberly ask: Whether it be possible to find any path so ready
to lead a man to virtue, as that which teacheth what virtue is; and teacheth it not only by delivering forth
his very being, his causes and effects; but also by making known his enemy, vice, which must be
destroyed; and his cumbersome servant, passion, which must be mastered, by showing the generalities
that contain it, and the specialities that are derived from it; lastly, by plain setting down how it extends
itself out of the limits of a man’s own little world, to the government of families, and maintaining of
public societies?
The historian scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to say so much, but that he (laden with old mouse-
eaten records, authórizing himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are
built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick
truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age, and yet
better knowing how this world goes than how his own wit runs; curious for antiquities, and inquisitive of
novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant in table-talk) denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for
teaching of virtue and virtuous actions, is comparable to him. I am “Testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita
memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuncia vetustatis.” The philosopher, saith he, teacheth a disputative virtue, but I
do an active; his virtue is excellent in the dangerless academy of Plato, but mine showeth forth her
honourable face in the battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poictiers, and Agincourt: he teacheth virtue by
certain abstract considerations; but I only bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before you:
old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine-witted philosopher; but I give the experience of many ages.
Lastly, if he make the song book, I put the learner’s hand to the lute; and if he be the guide, I am the
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light. Then would he allege you innumerable examples, confirming story by stories, how much the wisest
senators and princes have been directed by the credit of history, as Brutus, Alphonsus of Aragon (and
who not? if need be). At length, the long line of their disputation makes a point in this, that the one giveth
the precept, and the other the example.
Now whom shall we find, since the question standeth for the highest form in the school of learning, to be
moderator? Truly, as me seemeth, the poet; and if not a moderator, even the man that ought to carry the
title from them both, and much more from all other serving sciences. Therefore compare we the poet with
the historian, and with the moral philosopher; and if he go beyond them both, no other human skill can
match him; for as for the Divine, with all reverence, he is ever to be excepted, not only for having his
scope as far beyond any of these, as eternity exceedeth a moment, but even for passing each of these in
themselves; and for the lawyer, though “Jus” be the daughter of Justice, the chief of virtues, yet because
he seeks to make men good rather “formidine pœnæ” than “virtutis amore,” or, to say righter, doth not
endeavour to make men good, but that their evil hurt not others, having no care, so he be a good citizen,
how bad a man he be: therefore, as our wickedness maketh him necessary, and necessity maketh him
honourable, so is he not in the deepest truth to stand in rank with these, who all endeavour to take
naughtiness away, and plant goodness even in the secretest cabinet of our souls. And these four are all
that any way deal in the consideration of men’s manners, which being the supreme knowledge, they that
best breed it deserve the best commendation.
The philosopher, therefore, and the historian are they which would win the goal, the one by precept, the
other by example; but both, not having both, do both halt. For the philosopher, setting down with thorny
arguments the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other
guide but him shall wade in him until he be old, before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest. For his
knowledge standeth so upon the abstract and general, that happy is that man who may understand him,
and more happy that can apply what he doth understand. On the other side the historian, wanting the
precept, is so tied, not to what should be, but to what is; to the particular truth of things, and not to the
general reason of things; that his example draweth no necessary consequence, and therefore a less fruitful
doctrine.
Now doth the peerless poet perform both; for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done, he giveth
a perfect picture of it, by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done, so as he coupleth the general
notion with the particular example. A perfect picture, I say; for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an
image of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description, which doth neither strike,
pierce, nor possess the sight of the soul, so much as that other doth. For as, in outward things, to a man
that had never seen an elephant, or a rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shape,
colour, bigness, and particular marks? or of a gorgeous palace, an architect, who, declaring the full
beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were, by rote, all he had heard, yet should never
satisfy his inward conceit, with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge; but the same man, as
soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or that house well in model, should straightway grow,
without need of any description, to a judicial comprehending of them; so, no doubt, the philosopher, with
his learned definitions, be it of virtue or vices, matters of public policy or private government,
replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom, which, notwithstanding, lie dark before
the imaginative and judging power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking picture of
poesy.

CRITICISM ROMANTIC UNIT-III