THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 ERNEST CARROLL MOORE
 
 DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATING 
 ELIZABETHAN POETRY
 
 THE ENGLISH LIBRARY 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, blue cloth extra, gilt tops. 
 
 The Folk and their Word-Lore. An 
 Essay on Popular Etymologies. By Dr. A. 
 SMYTHE PALMER. 
 
 On the Study of Words. By Archbishop 
 R. C. TRENCH. With Notes and Index by Dr. 
 A. SMYTHE PALMER. 
 
 English Past and Present. By Archbishop 
 TRENCH. With Notes and Index by Dr. A. 
 SMYTHE PALMER. 
 
 Proverbs and their Lessons. By Arch- 
 bishop TRENCH. With Notes, Bibliography, and 
 Index by Dr. A. SMYTHE PALMER. 
 
 Punctuation: Its Principles and Prac- 
 tice. By T. F. HUSBAND, M.A. 
 
 How to Read English Literature. By 
 LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A. Part I. CHAUCER TO 
 MILTON. '[Ready.] Part II. DRYDEN.TO TENNY- 
 SON. [Oct., 1906.] 
 
 Documents Illustrating Elizabethan 
 Poetry. By Sir PHILIP SIDNEY, G. PUTTEN- 
 HAM, and W. WEBBE. Edited by LAURIE MAG- 
 NUS, M.A. 
 
 Others to follow.
 
 Documents Illustrating 
 Elizabethan Poetry 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, GEORGE PUTTENHAM 
 AND WILLIAM WEBBE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A. 
 Author of " Introduction to Poetry," etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LTD 
 
 NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & CO 
 
 1906
 
 Libraiy 
 
 PNI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THESE Elizabethan Discourses on the art of poetry 
 by Sidney, Puttenham, and Webbe are reprinted 
 from Professor Arber's texts. I have modernized 
 the spelling throughout. Puttenham's treatise 
 comprises three books, i. of Poets and Poesie, 
 ii. of Proportion, iii. of Ornament. I have repro- 
 duced only Bk. i. and Bk. iii., ch-4 (Of Language), 
 which I have inserted as an introduction to Bk. i., 
 given in full with the exception of certain passages 
 in chapter 26. Webbe's Discourse, as reproduced 
 here, is complete as far as it goes, but I have omitted 
 the sections dealing with matter and form and 
 with Horace's canons. 
 
 The scope and purpose of the documents are 
 explained in the Introduction and Notes. 
 
 L. M. 
 
 LONDON, March, 1906. 
 
 1326300
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . . .11 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 AN APOLOGY FOR POETRY 33 
 
 GEORGE PUTTENHAM 
 
 OF LANGUAGE ...... 109 
 
 OF POETS AND POESY . . . . .117 
 
 WILLIAM WEBBE 
 
 A DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH POETRY . . .197
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE almost simultaneous appearance of three critical 
 treatises on poetry in the last quarter of the sixteenth 
 century was not altogether fortuitous. In August 
 1579 Stephen Gosson published a pamphlet called 
 The School of Abuse. It aroused considerable dis- 
 cussion in the little coterie of young literary men who 
 were then at or near the circle of Queen Elizabeth's 
 Court. Edmund Spenser, who had entered his 
 Shepherd's Calendar at Stationers' Hall in the Decem- 
 ber of that year, wrote about it to Gabriel Harvey, 
 who, by virtue of his few more years and of his con- 
 siderably more pedantic erudition, ruled a group of 
 aspiring ' wits ' in the University of Cambridge. 
 Sir Philip Sidney, to whom, without his permission, 
 The School of Abuse had been dedicated by Gosson, 
 in a letter addressed in October 1580 to his brother 
 Robert, afterwards Earl of Leicester, showed that his 
 thoughts were partially preoccupied by the subject of 
 poetic criticism, and in the following September he 
 had completed the treatise entitled An Apology for 
 Poetry which is included in this volume. It is 
 clear from various pieces of evidence that Sidney's 
 defence of the art of poetry was circulated in 
 MS. among his friends, though it was not actually 
 published until 1595, nine years after his death. 
 Meanwhile in September 1586 a Discourse of English 
 Poetry was entered at Stationers' Hall on behalf of 
 William Webbe, and in November 1588 an entry was 
 
 made by Thomas Orwyn of the printing of The Art 
 11
 
 12 Introduction 
 
 of English Poesy in Three Books the First of Poets 
 and Poesy, the Second of Proportion, and the Third of 
 Ornament. This volume, transferred in 1589 to 
 Richard Feild, by whom it was published in that year, 
 with a dedication by Feild to Lord Burleigh, is ascribed 
 on sufficient evidence to George Puttenham, who 
 probably wrote it in or near the year 1585 a date 
 which is determined on internal evidence. These, 
 then, are the three treatises included in the present 
 volume, and their close coincidence in time is clearly 
 related to the Gosson publication. Accordingly, 
 before we consider their contents and their authorship 
 in detail, it will be well to examine the nature of this 
 relationship and the time and circumstances of their 
 production. 
 
 We are met at the outset by the remarkable fact 
 that within the space of a very few years possibly 
 even a few months Sidney and Spenser, two of the 
 greatest names in the history of English literature, 
 were joined with several of the minor writers of the 
 same epoch, such as Harvey, Webbe, Gosson, Putten- 
 ham, and the like, in discussing from a more or less 
 critical point of view, the art and craft of poetry. 
 This unanimity is surprising in itself, and it becomes 
 yet more surprising when we remark the unanimity 
 of their point of view. They all agree that English 
 poetry has fallen not merely upon a barren but upon 
 an evil time. This argument is sustained among 
 other places in the Tenth Eclogue of Spenser's Shep- 
 herd's Calendar where Cuddie, who stands as the 
 pattern of the perfect poet, and who may represent 
 Spenser himself, complains of the contempt in which 
 his art is held, and of the lack of maintenance for his 
 state and his studies. He illustrates this theme in a 
 manner with which the prose treatises in this volume 
 will shortly make us familiar, by contrasting the 
 present discontent of the poet with the honour and 
 esteem in which he was held in past ages, from the
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 time of the Greeks and Romans downwards. ' But 
 ah ! ', he sings, 
 
 But ah ! Mecaenas is yclad in claye, 
 And great Augustus long ygoe is dead, 
 And all the worthies liggen wrapt in leade. 
 That matter made for Poets on to play : 
 For ever, who in derring doe were dreade, 
 The loftie verse of hem was loved aye. . . . 
 
 And if that any buddes of Poesie, 
 Yet of the old stocke, gan to shoote agayne, 
 Or it mens follies mote be forst to fayne, 
 And rolle with rest in rymes of rybaudrye ; 
 Or, as it sprong, it wither must agayne : 
 Tom Piper makes us better melodie. 
 
 In the notes and commentary supplied liberally by 
 Edward Kirke to these eclogues of Spenser we are 
 told that Spenser had written a discourse, presumably 
 in prose, called The English Poet, and though there 
 is no record of the publication of that treatise, we may 
 fairly conjecture that it would have repeated at length 
 the views suggested by Cuddie in this eclogue. A 
 similar line of argument is taken by Sidney, Putten- 
 ham and Webbe, all of whom approach their subject 
 in an apologetic tone. With a singular likeness of 
 thought they make it clear to their readers that the 
 practice of poetry has been degraded from its ancient 
 and honourable estate, which they illustrate by refer- 
 ences more or less exact and correct, according to the 
 degree of learning attained by the several authors 
 to writers of antiquity, and they insist that this degra- 
 dation of the art which they love and cultivate is not 
 / inherent in the nature of poetry, but is the result of 
 * some outside cause operating to its discredit. Thus, 
 in a sense, they may all be said to fill the part of the 
 advocatus diaboli and to be defending an unpopular 
 cause against the popular attacks of those who see 
 no good in it. Gosson, who agrees with these writers 
 as to the evil state of English Poetry, differs from
 
 14 Introduction 
 
 them in his attitude towards it. He leads the attack- 
 ing party, and it is probably correct to say that his 
 School of Abuse was the direct motive of the defences 
 attempted by Sidney and Spenser, Puttenham and 
 Webbe. It will, therefore, be appropriate to quote in 
 this place a few passages from The School of Abuse in 
 order to see the type and style of the arguments to 
 which these writers hastened to reply in justification 
 of the Muse : 
 
 We have infinite poets and pipers, and such peevish 
 cattle among us in England, that live by merry begging, 
 maintained by alms, and privily encroach upon every 
 man's purse. But if they that are in authority, and have 
 the sword in their hands to cut off abuses, should call an 
 account to see how many Chirons, Terpandri, and Homers 
 are here, they might cast the sum without pen or counters, 
 and sit down with Racha to weep for her children, because 
 they were not. . . . 
 
 Consider with thyself, gentle reader, the old discipline 
 of England, mark what we were before and what we are 
 now : leave Rome a while, and cast thine eye back to thy 
 predecessors, and tell me how wonderfully we have been 
 changed since we were schooled with these abuses. Dion 
 saith that Englishmen could suffer watching and labour, 
 hunger and thirst, and bear of all storms with head and 
 shoulders ; they used slender weapons, went naked, and 
 were good soldiers, they fed upon roots and barks of 
 trees ; they would stand up to the chin many days in 
 marshes without victuals : and they had a kind of sus- 
 tenance in time of need, of which if they had taken but 
 the quantity of a bean, or the weight of a pease, they did 
 neither gape after meat, nor long for the cup, a great 
 while after. The men in valour not yielding to Scythia, 
 the women in courage passing the Amazons. The exercise 
 of both was shooting and darting, running and wrestling 
 and trying such masteries, as either consisted in swiftness 
 of feet, agility of body, strength of arms, or martial 
 discipline. But the exercise that is now among us is 
 banqueting, playing, piping, and dancing, and all such 
 delights as may win us to pleasure, or rock us to sleep. 
 Oh what a wonderful change is this ? Our wrestlings 
 at arms is turned to wallowing in ladies' laps, our courage 
 to cowardice, our running to riot, our bows into bolles, 
 and our darts to dishes. We have robbed Greece of
 
 Introduction 15 
 
 gluttony, Italy of wantonness, Spain of pride, France of 
 deceit, and Dutchland of quaffing. 
 
 Further, in these passages of invective, Gosson 
 naturally quotes the so-called authority of Plato, who 
 banished the poets from his ideal Republic, of Cicero, 
 who at the opening of his Tusculan Questions discusses 
 the abuses of the art, and of detached passages from 
 other writers of antiquity, which he turns to his own 
 purpose. 
 
 An obvious reference to these passages from Gosson 
 will be found in Sidney's Apology, p. 77 below. 
 
 But it is against the theatre especially, that Gosson's 
 virulence was directed. He admits that some of the 
 plays performed at the few London houses of that 
 date axe ' without rebuke ', but he adds that these 
 ' are as easily remembered as quickly reckoned ', and 
 it is noticeable that one of those exceptions described 
 as ' good plays, and sweet plays, and of all plays the 
 best plays and most to be liked ' is a drama of his 
 own, entitled Catiline's Conspiracies. With these 
 few, and perhaps not wholly impartial exceptions, 
 Gosson's abuse of the stage is unrestrained. With 
 singular temerity, considering how eager a patron of 
 the theatre Queen Elizabeth became in later life, he 
 appeals to her Majesty's influence and disposition in 
 urging his plea : 
 
 We unworthy servants of so mild a Majesty, unnatural 
 children of so good a mother, unthankful subjects of 
 so loving a prince, wound her heart with abusing her 
 lenity. . . . How many times hath access to theatres 
 been restrained, and how boldly again have we re-entered. 
 . . . In our assemblies at plays in London, you 
 shall see such heaving and shooing, such itching and 
 shouldering to sit by women ; such care for their garments 
 that they be not trod on ; such eyes to their laps that no 
 chips light in them ; such pillows to their backs that 
 they take no hurt. . . . Such ticking, such toying, such 
 smiling, such winking, and such manning them home 
 when the sports are ended, that it is a right comedy to 
 mark their behaviour.
 
 1 6 Introduction 
 
 Such then, briefly, was the case for the plaintiff, 
 and in the treatises reprinted here we have the case 
 for the defendants. It is interesting and instructive 
 to ask how it happened that at a time when Shakes- 
 peare was a lad at Stratford, and a very few years 
 before he came to London to seek his fortune on the 
 stage, such language and such views could have been 
 possible at all. In this context the year 1579 in 
 which The School of Abuse was published is in a sense 
 misleading, or, more correctly, the perspective of time 
 leads us in retrospect to take too general a view of the 
 events of the years preceding the rise of Marlowe 
 and Shakespeare. Every year in this period is import- 
 ant when reviewed at a closer range of vision. We 
 cannot remember too clearly that Gosson wrote his 
 attack, and that Sidney and the others wrote their 
 defences of poetry, before the fame of Spenser had 
 been established, and before however shortly before 
 the name of Shakespeare had been heard of outside 
 of his native village. They wrote in the darkness in 
 the worst darkness immediately before the dawn 
 which had gradually overgrown English literature 
 since the days of Chaucer two centuries before. Our 
 habit of speaking of the Elizabethan Age tends to 
 lead us to overlook the fact that the reign of Elizabeth 
 was divided into two different and quite distinct 
 periods that of preparation, and that of fulfilment. 
 
 The first period was the longer of the two. It 
 extended from Elizabeth's accession in 1558 till the 
 execution of Mary Stuart in February 1 587. To these 
 thirty years belonged the Act of Uniformity ; the 
 assassination of the Regent Moray, and the other 
 incidents of the dreary romance woven round Mary's 
 fascinating personality. In the same period there 
 was published the Papal Bull of Pius V, declaring 
 Elizabeth a heretic, and the foreign policy of this 
 generation was marked by the harassing and piratical 
 expeditions undertaken largely on their own respon-
 
 Introduction 17 
 
 sibility by English seamen against Philip of Spain. 
 A more definite tendency was given to these move- 
 ments towards the end of the period by English inter- 
 vention in the Netherlands, and by Drake's fine 
 exploits in the West Indies and at Cadiz. 
 
 The second period began after Queen Mary's execu- 
 tion, and ended at the death of Elizabeth herself in 
 1603. The removal of the Scottish peril left England 
 free to set her own house in order, while, at the same 
 time, it opened the road to a more definite declaration 
 of policy on the part of Spain. Mary's death loosened 
 the bonds by which Philip's hands had been tied. No 
 scruple now stood in his way to prevent him from 
 making his attempt to conquer England in his own 
 interests. So we come to the Spanish Armada in 
 1588, and about the same time we have to note the 
 death of the Earl of Leicester, and the gradual ad- 
 vancement of Essex in Elizabeth's counsels, till 
 in 1599 after Lord Burleigh's death he was 
 appointed to the command in Ireland. Noticeable 
 too in the review of this period, and especially notice- 
 able in connection with the swift succession of events 
 after Queen Elizabeth's death, is the increase of the 
 power of Parliament, with its victory over the Monop- 
 olies in 1 60 1, and, in an allied sphere of national pro- 
 gress, we have to note the Poor Law of the same year. 
 This growth of self-expression took another but a 
 kindred form in the full flower of Elizabethan litera- 
 ture, culminating in Bacon's prose and Shakespeare's 
 drama, and we have, further, to note that the period 
 witnessed the close of the struggle between the two 
 great Catholic powers, France and Spain, bringing 
 France into the important position in the forefront of 
 European nations which was to exert so strong an 
 influence on the politics of the succeeding century. 
 
 Accordingly, in this nearer perspective, the year 1 5 79, 
 in which the present state and the future prospects 
 of English poetry were debated so seriously by its 
 E.L. B
 
 i8 Introduction 
 
 champions and its detractors, is seen to lie somewhat 
 outside of the circumference of that brilliant circle 
 which is described as the Age of Elizabeth. For the 
 purpose of the critical studies included in this volume 
 and of the sharp attack on the drama and on allied 
 branches of poetry which Gosson not unlike Plato 
 in a similar period of poetical decadence at Athens 
 had advanced in his pamphlet, we have to reconstruct 
 the Elizabethan Age without Marlowe, Spenser, 
 Shakespeare, Bacon. We have to imagine ourselves 
 back in the reign of Elizabeth before the Spanish 
 Armada was launched, and before the hardy freebooters 
 of the sea had derived from its defeat their first 
 least glimmering of a sense of national responsibility, 
 which should temper and refine their spirit of dogged 
 patriotism. We have to conceive a cabinet of Queen 
 Elizabeth without the sagacity of Lord Burleigh, 
 and with Mary of Scotland still the centre of con- 
 spiracies which clouded the brightness of England's 
 meridian. Such an effort of imagination is indispens- 
 able to the correct apprehension of such data of 
 criticism as the following : 
 
 I have just cause to make a pitiful defence of poor 
 Poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of 
 learning is fallen to be the laughing stock of children. . . . 
 Now then go we to the most important imputations laid 
 to the poor Poets for aught I can yet learn, they are these : 
 first, that there being many other more fruitful knowledges, 
 a man might better spend his time in them than in this. 
 Secondly, that it is the mother of lies. Thirdly, that it 
 is the Nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent 
 desires : with a Siren's sweetness drawing the mind to 
 the Serpent's tale of sinful fancy. 
 
 Pp. 35 and 77 infra. 
 
 For, as well Poets as Poesy are despised, and the name 
 become, of honourable infamous, subject to scorn and 
 derision, and rather a reproach than a praise to any that 
 useth it. 
 
 P. 138.
 
 Introduction 19 
 
 Every one that can frame a Book of Rhyme, though for 
 want of matter, it be but in commendations of copper 
 noses or bottle ale, will catch at the Garland due to 
 Poets : whose pottical poetical (I should say) heads, I 
 would wish, at their worshipful commencements might, 
 instead of Laurel, be gorgeously garnished with fair green 
 barley, in token of their good affection of our English 
 malt. ... I scorn and spue out the rakehelly rout of our 
 ragged Rhymers, (for so themselves use to hunt the 
 Letter) which without learning boast, without judgment 
 jangle, without reason rage and fume, as if some instinct 
 of poetical spirit had newly ravished them, above the 
 meanness of common capacity. 
 
 P. 220. 
 
 Without that effort it is impossible to realize the 
 strength of the Puritan bias against the profligate 
 habits and unmannerly excesses which had grown 
 up round the early Elizabethan stage to the prejudice 
 of such theatrical companies as existed in 1579, and 
 which Gosson denounced with all the fervour of a con- 
 vert. 
 
 With this revised impression of the state of litera- 
 ture in England towards the close of the first period of 
 Elizabeth's reign, it is now instructive to ascertain 
 what were the signs in the literary horizon at that 
 time. Chiefly there was a great casting about for an 
 adequate and suitable prose style. Certain school- 
 masters and divines had written prose works which 
 more or less filled the gap stretching in English litera- 
 ture between the great names of Chaucer and Spenser, 
 and there were certain literary miscellanies which 
 performed the function of the reviews and magazines 
 of to-day in providing a refuge for the stray pieces of 
 original or critical writing which are produced in every 
 age. But at this moment in our history, when 
 politics were distracted by the Scottish and 
 Spanish dangers and when the fortunes of Eng- 
 land hardly saved by the masterful policy of Henry 
 VIII were entrusted to the precarious keeping of suc- 
 cessive favourites of the Queen, it is not a matter for
 
 2O Introduction 
 
 surprise that the literary voices should have been am- 
 biguous, and that no one in fact should have had 
 anything particularly urgent to say. In these circum- 
 stances, the search for a prose-style was neither 
 strenuous nor deliberate. There was a vague feeling, 
 stimulated to energy at the universities, that England 
 was likely to forfeit her share in the treasures of the 
 Renaissance for lack of a serviceable language in which 
 to represent them. ' Our vulgar ', as Puttenham 
 called it the rude speech of Tudor England was 
 incompetent to express the thoughts or to reproduce 
 the style of Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and their 
 continental disciples. Nor was it worthy of a great 
 nation, gradually raising herself to a sense of her 
 place in the sun, that the chief literary activity should 
 be monopolized by a band of translators, even though 
 it included men of such sterling merit as North, Phaer, 
 Golding and Florio. Moreover, there was a vague 
 stirring, moved to enthusiasm at the Court, due to 
 the occupation of the throne by a clever, active, self- 
 respecting woman, whose sex contrasted with the 
 associations of Henry VIII and his predecessors, and 
 whose virgin isolation and self -assertion were so refresh- 
 ing a change from the conscientious dubitations of 
 Philip's wife, Mary Tudor. This stirring of a new 
 chivalry and of a new sense of England's independence 
 required a language to express it, and the double 
 stimulus which came from the universities and the 
 Court, produced a series of experiments, half serious, 
 ,J half fanciful, and almost entirely academic, towards 
 the creation of a prose-style. It had to satisfy the 
 needs of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge needs 
 which, in that close atmosphere of learning, were not 
 without a tinge of pedantry and it had to gratify 
 the taste of the wits at Elizabeth's Court, who desired 
 to sing the praises of their mistress in correct alle- 
 gorical strains. The difficulty was that neither 
 party had anything much to say. They were on the
 
 Introduction 21 
 
 eve of a great impulse, but its direction had still to be 
 ascertained. The enchantments of the Middle Ages 
 were to break through a nation's awakening in the 
 scholar poet Edmund Spenser. The invocation to 
 character and conduct raised to their highest capacity 
 was reserved for Marlowe and Shakespeare, and the 
 courage to take all learning for his province was to be 
 the dower of Francis Bacon. But in these earlier, 
 vaguer days, before the country had defeated her 
 foes, or had developed, however imperfectly, any 
 common ideals, political, moral or social, such attempt 
 at self-expression were tentative and isolated, and 
 undirected to a definite end. They were diploma- 
 pieces, so to speak, the prize-exercises of clever stu- 
 dents, which lacked the vivifying force of experience 
 of the larger world. On the side of style and manner, 
 they had their own distinct value in the history of 
 English letters, but they were not very enduring 
 contributions to national literature. 
 
 Thus, John Lyly, of Magdalen College, Oxford, 
 seeking a place in the sun, or office in Elizabeth's 
 Court, composed novels and plays for the entertain- 
 ment of the Queen, and became incidentally the first 
 English novelist, in the sense of the first writer to 
 graft a plot on his moralizings, and the father of 
 English comedy. How much he owed to The Golden 
 Book or The Dial of Princes by Antonio de Guevara 
 (1495-1545), the Spanish stylist, and confessor to 
 Charles V of Spain, is a question which scholars are 
 deciding in a diminishing scale of affirmation. Larger 
 portions of the debt are ' written off ' by successive 
 inquirers, and the truth seems to be that euphuism in 
 England existed before Euphues, and that Lyly's two 
 volumes, Euphues : the Anatomy of Wit and Euphues 
 and his England, were at once fruit and seed, the pro- 
 duct and the cause of a movement towards artificial 
 expression which the times and the Court required. 
 The movement, as such, was short-lived. It enjoyed
 
 22 Introduction 
 
 extravagant praise during its brief popularity, and 
 its obvious mannerisms of alliteration, simple and 
 compound, its far-fetched similes from the fauna and 
 flora of the ancients, its affected apparatus of antithe- 
 tical periods and so forth, were checked by the 
 parodies to which they readily lent themselves when 
 the dust of pedantry was disturbed by the fresh 
 breezes of Elizabethan drama. But though the reign 
 of the Euphuists was comparatively short, their 
 indirect influence on English literature has been almost 
 incalculable. Prose-fiction in the eighteenth and nine- 
 teenth centuries traces its descent through Lyly, and 
 the characteristic marks of English prose the short 
 sentence and the paragraph are derived from the 
 innovations employed by the Tudor euphuists. 
 
 Thus again, Sir Philip Sidney, when he retired 
 temporarily from Court, composed for the amusement 
 of his sister a long, meandering romance called The 
 Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, into which he wove 
 the dreams of action which he never realized in his 
 life, and through which he expressed the ideal of 
 chivalrous conduct which won him eternal fame in 
 the fatal field of Zutphen. Arcadianism was not a 
 new note in English letters, but Sidney's use of it was 
 marked by a rigid adherence to classical models. 
 When he writes in the Apology (p. 43 infra) that he 
 ' dare not allow ' the rustic language employed by 
 Edmund Spenser in The Shepherd's Calendar, he rests 
 his objection on the sacred authority of Theocritus 
 and Virgil. The ' wit ' of the writers of this period 
 was a kind of cult of culture, and the rules and pat- 
 terns by which they worked led to the formation of 
 literary clubs and cliques with rival theories of salva- 
 tion by style. Sidney's club was ' the Areopagus ', 
 the leading spirit in which was that of Gabriel Harvey, 
 a scholar by taste and pedant by instinct, who enjoyed 
 a contemporary reputation which posterity has not 
 confirmed. The Arcadia was a reply to the demand
 
 Introduction 23 
 
 for a prose-style at Court, but it is valuable to-day, 
 not for its conscientious care to observe the pastoral 
 canons, but for the testimony it affords to the high 
 purpose of the writer who, more than any hero of 
 action or letters, ' wore the white flower of a blameless 
 life '. The pastoral vein was continued through 
 Spenser and Milton, and has been used effectively in 
 our day ; but neither Lyly nor Sidney, despite 
 their undoubted influence on the writers who suc- 
 ceeded them, solved the literary problem of 1579 
 how to give adequate expression to the new England 
 which was being developed on so many parallel lines 
 of national progress. Before another quarter of a 
 century had elapsed Hamlet and The Advancement of 
 Learning were added to the heritage ; the Euphuist 
 and Arcadians flourished before this revelation. 
 
 One conclusion of great moment arises out of the 
 consideration of the experiments of this time. It is 
 the emancipation of woman from the unnatural seclu- 
 sion to which she had been relegated in the Middle 
 Ages. Laura and Beatrice, so to speak, were taken 
 down from their shrines, to the incalculable gain 
 ultimately of society and manners, and incidentally 
 of literature. Part of this movement was due to the 
 sex and personality of the Sovereign, but a larger part 
 is to be traced to the rejection of the Papal dominion, 
 with its aesthetic cult of the Madonna and its false 
 standards of womanhood, leading to all the good and 
 evil of the old ascetic chivalry. The reform of social 
 life which was thus brought about paved the way (or 
 accompanied the evolution) of Parliamentary govern- 
 ment and democratic institutions. Here we may 
 note its beginnings in the two significant facts that 
 Lyly addressed himself to ladies, and that the Arcadia 
 was written for Mary Pembroke. It is noticeable, 
 too, that Puttenham's treatise in this volume was 
 expressly composed for the edification of Queen Eliza- 
 beth.
 
 24 Introduction 
 
 The state of letters and learning at the time when 
 these treatises were composed should now be fairly 
 clear, and it remains briefly to characterize their 
 authors and their contents. 
 
 Sidney is distinguished from Puttenham and Webbe 
 by the fact that he was a man of letters as well as a 
 compiler of books. No one can read the Apology 
 without at once being struck by the fine literary 
 flavour which his character imparted to his style. 
 Take, for example, in the early pages of this essay his 
 praise of the psalmist : 
 
 he showeth himself a passionate lover of that unspeakable 
 and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of the 
 mind, only cleared by faith 
 
 take his description of the poet who, 
 
 lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth 
 grow in effect another nature. ... So that he goeth 
 hand in hand with Nature, not inclosed within the narrow 
 warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within the 
 zodiac of his own wit 
 
 or his exaltation of the poets above the moral philoso- 
 phers, 
 
 whom, methinketh, I see coming towards 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 largess 
 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 it will readily be seen that Philip Sidney was a 
 thinker as well as a writer, and that he had made the 
 highest use of his few years of active life. That life 
 belongs to English history, and its brief and brilliant 
 story of promise and performance need not be recited
 
 Introduction 25 
 
 here in detail. He was born in 1554, the heir to a 
 great name, and was educated at Shrewsbury and 
 Oxford. Before he was twenty he had visited France, 
 Germany, and Italy, on private or diplomatic missions, 
 ' and had formed friendship or acquaintance with men 
 of the eminence of Camden, Essex, Languet, Tin- 
 toretto, Veronese. A year or two later William of 
 Orange relaxed his traditional silence to speak in 
 praise of the young Englishman who visited his Court, 
 and Sidney on his return added to the circle of his 
 friends Spenser, Hakluyt, Giordano Bruno, and other 
 great men of the age. He was in the counsels of the 
 Queen, though he fell for a time under her displeasure, 
 and when he died from the effects of the wound he 
 received at Zutphen in 1586 Spenser (in Astropkel), 
 Ralegh, James VI, Dray ton and Breton were among 
 the two hundred poets who wrote verses to his memory. 
 It is to be noted that none of his own writings was 
 published in his lifetime. The Arcadia appeared in 
 1590, Astrophel and Stella in 1591, the Apology for 
 Poetry in 1595, and his metrical version of the psalms 
 in 1823. Thus, it is clear that he wrote for a small 
 audience of critics and chiefly to satisfy himself. 
 For in literature, as in active life, Sidney was modest 
 by nature. Soldier, courtier and scholar, he typified 
 in all he did the Horatian motto placed by Henry 
 Olney on the title-page of the first edition of The 
 Apology for Poetry ' odi profanum vulgus, et arceo '. 
 Of Puttenham, George or Richard, for the author- 
 ship of the Art of English Poesy lies between two 
 brothers, little or nothing definite is known. The 
 Dictionary of National Biography inclines to ascribe 
 the treatise to Richard, elder son of Robert Putten- 
 ham, a country gentleman ; but Professor Arber 
 argued that the most plausible claim to the authorship 
 is that of George Puttenham, of whom little else is 
 known except from the internal evidence of this trea- 
 tise itself. Arber collected the evidence with great
 
 26 Introduction 
 
 skill and ingenuity, but there is little to add to our 
 previous knowledge of the fact that the first trace of 
 the association of Puttenham's name with the Art 
 of English Poesy is found in an MS. by one Edmund 
 Bolton, entitled Hypercritical, which, though written 
 in the reign of James I, was not published till 1722. 
 There the treatise is ascribed to one of ' Queen Eliza- 
 beth's gentlemen pensioners, Puttenham ', and beyond 
 the bare fact of this ascription we still cannot go. 
 Whether the treatise was written by Richard, or by 
 George, or by neither, it is clear to the reader that it 
 was composed with a view to winning the favour of 
 Queen Elizabeth, to whom the author addresses him- 
 self thoughout, and it may probably be inferred from 
 a passage in Chapter VIII (see note, p. 142) that 
 Puttenham had an eye to the patronage of the Queen, 
 or of one of her nobles, in composing his pamphlet. 
 It is written throughout in an easy though by no 
 means elevated style, and it displays a considerable 
 amount of fairly well-digested learning, which is 
 presented in a popular manner, without display. The 
 Books of Proportion and of Ornament, which are not 
 reprinted here, are of much inferior interest at the 
 present day, and include a lengthy list of so-called 
 ' auricular figures ', such as zeugma, parenthesis, 
 epithet, metaphor, onomatopoeia, irony, allegory, 
 hyperbole, climax, apostrophe, tautology to select 
 only the simplest and most familiar of the names 
 and so forth. From the references in this book to 
 other works by the same author references intro- 
 duced perhaps not without a touch of the candidate 
 marshalling his testimonials in applying for the 
 patronage of his mistress we gather that Puttenham 
 like so many scholars of his day before the sub- 
 division of the fields of learning was something of 
 an antiquarian and a poet as well as a student of pure 
 letters. His treatise is well worth careful perusal, 
 not merely as one of the earliest of its kind in the
 
 Introduction 27 
 
 English language, but also for its very fair summary of 
 the various kinds of literature, and for its interesting 
 criticism of the writer's contemporaries. 
 
 Of William Webbe we have also to state that very 
 little is known authoritatively. He was a college 
 friend of Edmund Spenser at Cambridge ; a graduate 
 at St. John's College, and we learn from the dedica- 
 tion of this book, and from other sources, that he 
 acted as tutor in the families of private gentlemen for 
 some years. He belonged to the school of The Areop- 
 agus, which aimed at the naturalization of classical ' 
 metres in English, and he was plainly a man of con- 
 siderable intellect and attainments. His present 
 book was evidently written while Webbe was under 
 the spell of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, which had 
 quite recently appeared with Edward Kirke's notes 
 and critical apparatus. His admiration for this pas- 
 toral poem which was only acknowledged as Spen- 
 ser's after his death does great credit to his discern- 
 ment, and raises his treatise at once to a high level 
 of criticism. His rapid survey of English poetry, up 
 to and including the writers of his own time, is particu- 
 larly interesting, and he went on from that point to 
 an elaborate comparison of Thomas Phaer's transla- 
 tion of the Mneid with the original text of Virgil. As 
 this great Elizabethan work has been superseded to- 
 day we have not reproduced Webbe's elaborate criti- 
 cism, nor have we reprinted his disquisition on the 
 matter or form of English poetry, which included 
 a criticism of the different sorts of verse employed in 
 The Shepherd's Calendar. Webbe translated Hob- 
 binol's song in that poem into sapphics, and the first 
 two eclogues of Virgil into English hexameters, thus 
 performing a pious office appropriate to his member- 
 ship of ' The Areopagus ', but of no value to modern 
 readers. His treatise concluded with an appendix 
 containing all the canons of poetry prescribed by 
 Horace in his De Avte Poetica, and in several of his
 
 28 Introduction 
 
 epistles, and we cannot doubt but that his discourse 
 was of eminent use and interest to the Elizabethan 
 audience to whom it was addressed. It is to be noted 
 that, like Puttenham, his acquaintance with the 
 classics was rather literary than exact. He makes 
 Pindar older than Homer, and Ovid than Horace. 
 Still, he earns high praise from that just judge, Pro- 
 fessor Saintsbury, who writes in his monumental 
 History of Criticism : 
 
 On the whole, to use the hackneyed old phrase once 
 more, we could have better spared a better critic than 
 Webbe, who gives us in a fashion invaluable to map- 
 makers of the early exploration of English criticism the 
 workings of a mind furnished with no original genius 
 for poetry, and not much for literature, not very exten- 
 sively or accurately erudite, but intensely interested in 
 matters literary, and especially in matters poetical, 
 generously enthusiastic for such good things as were 
 presented to it, not without some mother-wit even in its 
 crazes, and encouraged in those crazes not, as in Harvey's 
 case, by vanity, pedantry, and bad taste, but by its very 
 love of letters. Average dispositions of this kind were, 
 as a rule, diverted either into active life very much for 
 the good of the nation or not at all for its good into 
 the acrid disputes of hot-gospelling and Puritanism. 
 Webbe, to the best of his modest powers, was a devotee 
 of literature : for which let him have due honour. 
 
 Finally, we reproduce the three dedicatory epistles 
 which belong to these treatises. The first is signed 
 by Henry Olney, the printer and publisher of Sir 
 Philip Sidney's Apology in 1595, and is addressed to 
 the reader. The anonymous Art of English Poesy 
 was dedicated by Richard Feild, its printer, to Lord 
 Burleigh in somewhat extravagant terms, and Webbe 
 writes his own dedication to Edward Sulyard, to 
 whose sons he was acting as tutor at this time. 
 
 The publisher's dedication to ' An Apology for 
 Poetry : written by the right noble, virtuous and 
 learned Sir Philip Sidney, Knight ' : London, 1595.
 
 Introduction 29 
 
 To THE READER 
 
 THE stormy Winter, dear Children of the Muses, which 
 hath so long held back the glorious Sunshine of divine 
 Poesy, is here by the sacred pen-breathing words of 
 divine Sir Philip Sidney, not only chased from our fame- 
 inviting Clime, but utterly for ever banished eternity : 
 then graciously we greet the perpetual spring of ever- 
 growing invention, and like kind Babes, either enabled 
 by wit or power, help to support me poor Midwife, whose 
 daring adventure hath delivered from Oblivion's womb 
 this ever-to-be-admired wit's miracle. Those great 
 ones who in themselves have interred this blessed innocent, 
 will with Aesculapius condemn me as a detractor from 
 their Deities : those who Prophet-like have but heard 
 presage of his coming, will (if they will do well) not only 
 defend but praise me, as the first public bewrayer of 
 Poesy's Messiah. Those who neither have seen, thereby 
 to inter, nor heard, by which they might be inflamed 
 with desire to see, let them (of duty) plead to be my 
 Champions, sith both their sight and hearing, by mine 
 incurring blame is seasoned. Excellent Poesy (so created 
 by this Apology) be thou my Defendress ; and if any 
 wound me, let thy beauty (my soul's Adamant) re-cure 
 me : if any commend mine endeavoured hardiment, to 
 them commend thy most divinest fury as a winged en- 
 couragement ; so shalt thou have devoted to thee, and 
 to them obliged. 
 
 HENRY OLNEY. 
 
 The Publisher's Dedication to ' The Art of English 
 Poesy : contrived into three Books : the first of Poets 
 and Poesy, the second of Proportion, the third of Orna- 
 ment''. London, 1589. 
 
 To THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR WILLIAM CECIL, 
 KNIGHT, LORD OF BURGHLEY, LORD HIGH TREA- 
 SURER OF ENGLAND, R[ICHARD] F[EILD], PRINTER, 
 WISHETH HEALTH AND PROSPERITY, WITH THB 
 COMMANDMENT AND USE OF HIS CONTINUAL SERVICE. 
 
 THIS Book (Right Honourable) coming to my hands, 
 with his bare title without any Author's name or any 
 other ordinary address, I doubted how well it might 
 become me to make you a present thereof, seeming by 
 many express passages in the same at large, that it was
 
 30 Introduction 
 
 by the Author intended to our Sovereign Lady the Queen, 
 and for her recreation and service chiefly devised, in 
 which case to make any other person her Highness's 
 partner in the honour of his gift it could not stand with 
 my duty, nor be without some prejudice to her Majesty's 
 interest and his merit. Perceiving besides the title to 
 purport so slender a subject as nothing almost could be 
 more discrepant from the gravity of your years and 
 honourable function, whose contemplations are every 
 hour more seriously employed upon the public admin- 
 istration and services : I thought it no condign gratifica- 
 tion, nor scarce any good satisfaction for such a person 
 as you. Yet when I considered that bestowing upon 
 your Lordship the first view of this mine impression (a 
 feat of mine own simple faculty) it could not cipher 
 her Majesty's honour or prerogative in the gift, nor yet 
 the Author of his thanks : and seeing the thing itself 
 to be a device of some novelty (which commonly giveth 
 every good thing a special grace), and a novelty so highly 
 tending to the most worthy praises of her Majesty's most 
 excellent name (dearer to you, I dare conceive, than any 
 worldly thing besides) methought I could not devise 
 to have presented your Lordship any gift more agreeable 
 to your appetite, or fitter for my vocation and ability to 
 bestow, your Lordship being learned and a lover of 
 learning, my present a book and myself a printer always 
 ready and desirous to be at your honourable command- 
 ment. And thus I humbly take my leave from the 
 Blackfriars, this xxviii, of May, 1589, Your Honour's most 
 humble at commandment, 
 
 R. F. 
 
 The Author's Dedication to ' A Discourse of English 
 Poetry. Together with the author's Judgment touch- 
 ing the reformation of our English verse t by William 
 Webbe, Graduate'. London, 1586. 
 
 To THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL, LEARNED, AND MOST GENTLE 
 GENTLEMAN, OUR VERY GOOD MASTER MASTER 
 EDWARD SULIARD, ESQUIRE, W[ILLIAM] W[EBBE] 
 WISHETH HIS HEART'S DESIRE. 
 
 MAY it please you, Sir, this once more to bear with my 
 rudeness in presenting unto your view another slender 
 conceit, of my simple capacity : wherein, although I 
 am not able to bring you anything which is meet to
 
 Introduction 31 
 
 detain you from your more serious matters, yet upon 
 my knowledge of your former courtesy and your favour- 
 able countenance towards all enterprises of Learning, 
 I dare make bold to crave your accustomed patience, in 
 turning over some of these few leaves, which I shall 
 account a greater recompense, then the writing thereof 
 may deserve. 
 
 The firm hope of your wonted gentleness, not any good 
 liking of mine own labour, made me thus presumptuously 
 to crave your Worship's patronage for my poor book. 
 A pretty answer is reported by some to be made by 
 Apelles to King Alexander, who (in disport) taking up 
 one of his pencils to draw a line, and asking the Painter's 
 judgment of his draught, 'It is done', quoth Apelles, 
 ' like a King ' : meaning indeed it was drawn as he 
 pleased, but was nothing less than good workmanship. 
 Myself in like sort, taking upon me to make a draught 
 of English Poetry, and requesting your Worship's censure 
 of the same, you will perhaps give me this verdict, ' It 
 was done like a Scholar ', meaning, as I could, but indeed 
 more like to a learner than one through grounded in 
 poetical workmanship. 
 
 Alexander, in drawing his line, leaned sometime too 
 hard, otherwhile too soft, as never having been appren- 
 tice to the Art : I in drawing this poetical discourse, 
 make it some where too straight (leaving out the chief col- 
 ours and ornaments of Poetry), in another place too wide 
 (stuffing in pieces little pertinent to true Poetry) as one 
 never acquainted with the learned Muses. What then ? 
 As he, being a king, might meddle in what science him 
 listed, though therein he had no skill : so I, being a 
 learner, will try my cunning in some parts of Learning, 
 though never so simple. 
 
 Now, as for my saucy pressing upon your expected 
 favour in craving your judgment, I beseech you let me 
 make this excuse : that whereas true Gentility did 
 never withdraw her loving affection from Lady Learning, 
 so I am persuaded, that your Worship cannot choose but 
 continue your wonted favourable benignity towards 
 all the endeavourers to learning, of which corporation 
 I do indeed profess myself one silly member. 
 
 For sith the writers of all ages have sought as an un- 
 doubted Bulwark and stedfast safeguard the patronage 
 of Nobility (a shielde as sure as can be to learning), 
 wherein to shroud and safely place their several inven- 
 tions ; why should not I seek some harbour for my poor 
 travail to rest and stay upon, being of itself unable
 
 32 Introduction 
 
 to shift the carping cavils and biting scorns of levrd 
 controllers ? 
 
 And in truth, where might I rather choose a sure 
 defence and ready refuge for the same, then where I see 
 perfect Gentility and nobleness of mind to be fast linked 
 with excellency of learning and affable courtesy ? More- 
 over, add this to the end of mine excuse : that I send 
 it into your sight, not as any witty piece of work that 
 may delight you, but being a slight somewhat compiled 
 for recreation, in the intermissions of my daily business 
 (even this Summer Evenings), as a token of that earnest 
 and unquenchable desire I have to show myself dutiful 
 and well-willing towards you. Whereunto I am con- 
 tinually inflamed more and more, when I consider either 
 your favourable friendship used towards myself, or your 
 gentle countenance showed to my simple travails. The 
 one I have tried in that homely translation I presented 
 unto you : the other I find true in your courteous putting 
 to^my trust and doing me so great honesty and credit, with 
 the charge of these toward young Gentlemen your sons. 
 To which pregnant imps of right excellent hope I 
 would I were able or you might have occasion to make 
 trial of my loving mind : who should well perceive my- 
 self to remain unto them a faithful and trusty Achates, 
 even so far as my wealth, my woe, my power or peril, 
 my pen or wit, my health or life may serve to search 
 mine ability. 
 
 Huge heaps of words I might pile together to trouble 
 you withal : either of myself or of my doings (as some 
 do), or of your Worship's commendable virtues (as the 
 most do). But I purposely choose rather to let pass 
 the spreading of that worthy fame which you have ever 
 deserved, than to run in suspicion of fawning flattery 
 which I ever abhorred. 
 
 Therefore once again craving your gentle pardon, 
 and patience in your overlooking this rude Epistle : 
 and wishing more happiness than my pen can express 
 to you and your whole retinue, I rest, 
 
 Your Worship's faithful Servant, 
 
 W. W.
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
 AN 
 APOLOGY FOR POETRY 
 
 WHEN the right virtuous Edward Wotton 1 and 
 I were at the Emperor's Court together, we gave 
 ourselves to learn horsemanship of John Pietro 
 Pugliano : one that with great commendation had 
 the place of an Esquire in his stable. And he, 
 according to the fertileness of the Italian wit, did 
 
 1 Edward Wotton (1548-1626) was created Baron 
 Wotton in 1603. The Emperor was Rudolf II, and the 
 date of the embassy 1577. 
 
 As a point of style, it may be urged that Sidney's 
 exordium is too long. The analogy between Pugliano's 
 defence of horsemanship and Sidney's defence of poetry 
 each craftsman praising his own is artistic in concep- 
 tion, but English prose had not yet sufficiently developed 
 the laws of proportion and restraint in the marshalling of 
 ideas. But note at the same time the elevation of the 
 style. The light touch and modulation of pitch which were 
 to characterize the British essayists of succeeding centuries, 
 till the art reached its height in the inimitable Lamb, 
 were already immanent in such phrases as ' if I had not 
 been a piece of a logician ... he would have persuaded 
 me to have wished myself a horse.' Sidney's essay, alone 
 in this volume, is good literature as well as interesting 
 criticism. Puttenham and Webbe are pedestrian writers. 
 E.L. 33 C
 
 34 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 not only afford us the demonstration of his practice, 
 but sought to enrich our minds with the contem- 
 plations therein which he thought most precious. 
 But with none I remember mine ears were at any 
 time more laden than when (either angered with 
 slow payment or moved with our learner-like 
 admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise 
 of his faculty. He said Soldiers were the noblest 
 estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of 
 Soldiers. He said, they were the Masters of war, 
 and ornaments of peace : speedy goers, and 
 strong abiders, triumphers both in Camps and 
 Courts. Nay, to so unbelieved a point he pro- 
 ceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder 
 to a Prince as to be a good horseman. Skill of 
 government was but a Pedanteria in comparison : 
 then would he add certain praises, by telling what a 
 peerless beast a horse was. The only serviceable 
 Courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty, 
 faithfulness, courage, and such more, that, if I had 
 not been a piece of a Logician before I came to 
 him, I think he would have persuaded me to have 
 wished myself a horse. But thus much at least 
 with his no few words he drove into me, that self- 
 love is better than any gilding to make that seem 
 gorgeous, wherein ourselves are parties. 
 
 Wherein, if Pugliano's strong affection and 
 weak arguments will not satisfy you, I will give you 
 a nearer example of myself, who (I know not by 
 what mischance) in these my not old years and 
 idlest times having slipt into the title of a Poet, 
 am provoked to say something unto you in the 
 defence of that my unelected vocation 2 , which 
 
 2 In reference to Stephen Gosson (author of The School
 
 An Apology for Poetry 35 
 
 if I handle with more good will than good reasons, 
 bear with me, since the scholar is to be pardoned 
 that followeth the steps of his Master. And yet 
 I must say that, as I have just cause to make a 
 pitiful defence of poor Poetry, which from almost 
 the highest estimation of learning is fallen to be 
 the laughing stock of children, so have I need to 
 bring some more available proofs : since the former 
 is by no man barred of his deserved credit, the 
 silly latter hath had even the names of Philosophers 
 used to the defacing of it, with great danger of 
 civil war among the Muses. 
 
 And first, truly to all them that professing 
 learning inveigh against Poetry may justly be 
 objected, that they go very near to ungratefulness 
 to seek to deface that which in the noblest nations 
 and languages that are known hath been the first 
 light-giver to ignorance, and first Nurse, whose 
 milk by little and little enabled them to feed 
 afterwards of tougher knowledges : and will they 
 now play the Hedgehog, that being received into 
 the den, drove out his host ?, or rather the Vipers, 
 that with their birth kill their Parents 3 ? Let 
 learned Greece in any of her manifold Sciences 
 be able to show me one book, before Musaeus, 
 Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but 
 Poets. Nay, let any history be brought, that can 
 say any writers were there before them, if they 
 
 of Abuse, 1579, to which this treatise is in the nature of a 
 reply), who had without authority used Sidney's name 
 in dedicatory epistles. 
 
 3 The use of illustrations from natural history is a 
 Euphuistic conceit natural to the times. Lyly's EupJiues 
 was published in 1579.
 
 36 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 were not men of the same skill as Orpheus, Linus, 
 and some other are named ; who, having been 
 the first of that Country that made pens deliverers 
 of their knowledge to their posterity, may justly 
 challenge to be called their Fathers in learning. 
 For not only in time they had this priority (al- 
 though in itself antiquity be venerable) but went 
 before them, as causes to draw with their charming 
 sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration 
 of knowledge. So Amphion was said to move 
 stones with his Poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus 
 to be listened to by beasts, indeed, stony and 
 beastly people. So among the Romans were 
 Livius Andronicus and Ennius 4 . So, in the Italian 
 language, the first that made it aspire to be a 
 Treasure-house of Science, were the Poets Dante, 
 Boccacio, and Petrarch. So in our English were 
 Gower and Chaucer. 
 
 After whom, encouraged and delighted with 
 their excellent fore-going, others have followed, 
 to beautify our mother-tongue, as well in the same 
 kind as in other Arts. This did so notably show 
 itself that the Philosophers of Greece durst not a 
 long time appear to the world but under the masks 
 of Poets. So Thales, Empedocles, and Parmenides 
 sang their Natural Philosophy in verses : so did 
 Pythagoras and Phocilides their moral counsels : 
 so did Tyrtseus in war matters, and Solon in matters 
 of policy. Or, rather, they being Poets, did 
 
 * Livius Andronicus was a Greek slave at Rome (c. 
 275 B.C.). His Latin versions of Greek authors were used 
 for many years as text-books in schools. Ennius in the 
 next century was an early epic writer, and Sidney might 
 have mentioned Naevius (269-204 B.C.), who was a Latin 
 by birth, and a much better writer than Andronicus.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 37 
 
 exercise their delightful vein in those points of 
 highest knowledge which before them lay hid to 
 the world. For that wise Solon was directly a 
 Poet, it is manifest, having written in verse the 
 notable fable of the Atlantic Island, which was 
 continued by Plato. 
 
 And truly, even Plato, whosoever well consider- 
 eth shall find that in the body of his work, though 
 the inside and strength were Philosophy, the 
 skin as it were and beauty depended most of 
 Poetry. For all standeth upon Dialogues, wherein 
 he feigneth many honest burgesses of Athens to 
 speak of such matters that if they had been set on 
 the rack they would never have confessed them. 
 Besides, his poetical describing the circumstances 
 of their meetings, as the well ordering of a banquet, 
 the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tales, 
 as Gyges' Ring, and others, which who knoweth 
 not to be flowers of Poetry did never walk into 
 Apollo's Garden. 
 
 And even Historiographers (although their 
 lips sound of things done, and verity be written 
 in their foreheads) have been glad to borrow 
 both fashion and perchance weight of Poets. So 
 Herodotus entituled his History by the name of 
 the nine Muses ; and both he and all the rest that 
 followed him either stole or usurped of Poetry 
 their passionate describing of passions, the many 
 particularities of battles, which no man could 
 affirm ; or if that be denied me, long Orations put 
 in the mouths of great Kings and Captains, which 
 it is certain they never pronounced. So that 
 truly, neither Philosopher nor Historiographer 
 could at the first have entered into the gates of
 
 38 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 popular judgments, if they had not taken a great 
 passport of Poetry, which in all Nations at this 
 day where learning flourisheth not is plain to be 
 seen : in all which they have some feeling of 
 Poetry. 
 
 In Turkey, besides their law-giving Divines, 
 they have no other writers but Poets. In our 
 neighbour Country Ireland, where truly learning 
 goeth very bare, yet are their Poets held in a 
 devout reverence. Even among the most bar- 
 barous and simple Indians, where no writing is, 
 yet have they their Poets who make and sing songs 
 which they call Areytos, both of their Ancestors' 
 deeds and praises of their Gods. A sufficient 
 probability, that, if ever learning come among 
 them, it must be by having their hard dull wits 
 softened and sharpened with the sweet delights 
 of Poetry. For until they find a pleasure in the 
 exercises of the mind, great promises of much 
 knowledge will little persuade them that know 
 not the fruits of knowledge. In Wales, the true 
 remnant of the ancient Britons, as there are 
 good authorities to show the long time they had 
 Poets, which they called Bards, so through all the 
 conquests of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, 
 some of whom did seek to ruin all memory of 
 learning from among them, yet do their Poets 
 even to this day last ; so that it is not more 
 notable in soon beginning than in long continuing 5 . 
 
 6 Sidney covers this familiar ground more rapidly than 
 other writers in his age. The argument is that, because 
 metrical composition preceded prose in date, therefore 
 poetry should be held in higher honour. The reasoning 
 is both unscientific and fallacious. Neither Sidney nor
 
 ^ An Apology for Poetry 39 
 
 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, Fore-seer, or 
 Prophet, as by its 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 chanceable hitting upon any such 
 verses great fore-tokens of their following fortunes 
 were placed. Whereupon grew the word of Sortes 
 Virgiliance, when by sudden opening Virgil's 
 book they lighted upon any verse of his making, 
 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 
 
 Anna amens capio nee sat rationis in armis, 
 
 and in his age performed it ; which, although it 
 were a very vain and godless superstition, as also 
 it was to think that spirits were commanded by 
 
 his contemporaries tell us why poetry should not be the 
 more despised, if, on their own showing, the fathers of 
 learning, philosophers, historiographers and so forth, 
 adopted prose instead of verse at the earliest available 
 opportunity. The fact is that the argument from the 
 primitive mnemonic uses of rude metrical forms for 
 oracular and other purposes has no bearing whatsoever on 
 the value of poetry as a branch of literary composition. 
 Sidney himself is doubtful of the validity of the plea from 
 antiquity, and he seems more pleased than Puttenham 
 (see infra) to leave this part of his ' apology ' behind him.
 
 40 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 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 Delphos and Sibylla's prophecies 
 were wholly delivered in verses. For that same 
 exquisite observing of number and measure in 
 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 further 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 Psalms will speak for me, 
 which, being interpreted, is nothing but songs. 
 Then that it 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 
 Prosopopeias 6 , when he maketh you, as it were, 
 see God coming in His Majesty?, his telling of the 
 Beasts' joy fulness, and hills leaping, but a heavenly 
 poesy?; wherein almost he showeth himself a 
 passionate lover of that unspeakable and ever- 
 lasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of the mind, 
 only cleared by faith. But truly now having 
 named him, I fear me I seem to profane that holy 
 name, applying it to Poetry, which is among us 
 
 6 Personifications.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 41 
 
 thrown down to so ridiculous an estimation. But 
 they that with quiet judgments will 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 named it, 
 and how they deemed of it. The Greeks called 
 him a Poet, which name hath, as the most excellent, 
 gone through other Languages. It cometh of 
 this word Poiein, which is, to make : wherein I 
 know not whether by luck or wisdom we English- 
 men 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 my partial 
 allegation. 
 
 There is no Art delivered to mankind that hath 
 not the works of Nature for its principal object, 
 without which they could not consist, and on 
 which they so depend that 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 setteth down what 
 order Nature hath taken therein. So do the 
 Geometrician and Arithmetician in their divers 
 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, and passions of man ; and 
 follow Nature (saith he) therein, and thou shalt 
 not err. The Lawyer saith what men have deter- 
 mined, the Historian what men have done. The 
 Grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech,
 
 42 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 and the Rhetorician and Logician, considering 
 what in Nature will soonest prove and persuade, 
 thereon give artificial rules, which still are com- 
 passed within the circle of a question, according 
 to the proposed matter. The Physician weigheth 
 the nature of a man's body, and the nature of 
 things helpful or 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 another nature, in 
 making things either better than Nature bringeth 
 forth, or quite a new form such as never were in 
 Nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, 
 Furies, and such like. So that he goeth hand in 
 hand with Nature, not inclosed within the narrow 
 warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging only within 
 the Zodiac of his own wit 7 . 
 
 Nature never set forth the earth in so rich 
 tapestry as divers Poets have done, neither with 
 pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling 
 flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much 
 loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen : 
 
 7 The argument in the foregoing paragraphs is far in 
 advance of the conventional moralizing on the words vates 
 and iroifiv. The splendid testimony to the literary 
 value of psalms is unique in its age, and the maxim that 
 ' there is no art that hath not the works of nature for its 
 principal object ' is a sound and notable canon of criticism. 
 Finally, the remark that ' the poet doth grow in effect 
 another nature ' goes to the root of the distinction between 
 the truths ascertained by the observation and the higher 
 truths adumbrated by the interpretation of nature.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 43 
 
 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 Theagines, so 
 constant a friend as Pylades, so valiant a man as 
 Orlando, so right a Prince as Xenophon's Cyrus, 
 so excellent a man every way as Virgil's Aeneas. 
 Neither let this be jestingly conceived, because the 
 works of the one be essential ; the other, in imita- 
 tion or fiction for any understanding knoweth the 
 skill of the 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 mani- 
 fest by delivering them forth in such excellence 
 as he hath 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 far surpassing her doings, with no small 
 argument to the incredulous of that first accursed
 
 44 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 fall of Adam : since our erected wit maketh us 
 know what perfection is, and yet our infected will 
 keepeth us from reaching unto it 8 . 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 it the name above ah 1 names of 
 learning. Now let us go to a more ordinary 
 opening of it, that the truth may be more 
 palpable : and so I hope, though we get not so 
 unmatched a praise as the Etymology of its names 
 will grant, yet its very description, which no man 
 will deny, shall not justly be barred from a principal 
 commendation. 
 
 Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so 
 Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, 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 several kinds. The chief both 
 in antiquity and excellency were they that did 
 imitate the inconceivable excellencies of God. 
 Such were David in his Psalms ; Solomon in his 
 Song of Songs, in his Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs ; 
 Moses and Deborah in their Hymns, and the writer 
 of Job ; which, beside other, the learned Emanuel 
 Tremilius and Franciscus 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 full wrong divinity, were 
 
 ' Erected wit . . . infected will ' ; a Euphuistic turn 
 of phrase.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 45 
 
 Orpheus, Amphion, Homer in his hymns, and many 
 other, both Greeks and Romans : and this Poesy 
 must be used by whosoever will follow St James' 
 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 9 . 
 
 The second kind is of them that deal with 
 matters Philosophical ; either moral, as Tyrtaeus, 
 Phocilides and Cato, or natural, as Lucretius and 
 Virgil's Georgics : or Astronomical, as Manilius, and 
 Pontanus : or historical, as Lucan : which who 
 mislike, the fault is in their judgments 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 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 
 
 9 Sir Philip Sidney began, and the Countess of Pem- 
 broke completed, a metrical translation of the Psalms. 
 See R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life (Murray), 
 ch. vi.
 
 46 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 never saw, but painteth the outward beauty of 
 such a virtue. For these third 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 Vales, so these are waited on in the ex- 
 cellentest 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 where- 
 unto 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 are the Heroic, 
 Lyric, Tragic, Comic, Satiric, Iambic, Elegiac, 
 Pastoral, and certain others ; some of these being 
 termed according to the matter they deal with, 
 some by the sorts of verses they liked best to 
 write in, for indeed the greatest part of Poets have 
 apparelled their poetical inventions in that num- 
 brous kind of writing which is called verse : indeed 
 but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and 
 no cause to Poetry 10 : since there have been many 
 
 10 This touches the fringe of what is now an old debate, 
 whether poetry is a mode of feeling or a form of expres- 
 sion, or both combined.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 47 
 
 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 
 imperil, the portraiture of a just Empire, under the 
 name of Cyrus, (as Cicero saith of him) made therein 
 an absolute heroical Poem. 
 
 So did Heliodorus in his sugared invention of 
 that picture of love in Theagines and Cariclea, 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 hath 
 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 chanceably 
 fall from the mouth, but poising each syllable of 
 each word by just proportion according to the 
 dignity of the subject. 
 
 Now, therefore, it shall not be amiss first to 
 weigh this latter sort of Poetry by its works, 
 and then by its parts ; and if in neither of these 
 Anatomies it be condemnable, I hope we shall 
 obtain a more favourable sentence. This purifying 
 of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of 
 judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which com- 
 monly we call learning, under what name soever it 
 come forth, or to what immediate end soever it
 
 48 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 be directed, the final end is to lead and draw us to 
 as high a perfection as our degenerate souls made 
 worse by their clayey lodgings can be capable of. 
 This, according to the inclination of the man, bred 
 many-formed impressions ; for some that thought 
 this felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, 
 and no knowledge to be so high and heavenly as 
 acquaintance 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 demonstration to the Mathe- 
 matics : 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 its 
 own divine essence. 
 
 But when by the balance of experience it was 
 found that the Astronomer looking to the stars 
 might fall into a ditch, that the inquiring Philoso- 
 pher might be blind in himself, and the Mathema- 
 tician 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 each a 
 private end in themselves, so yet are they all 
 directed to the highest end of the mistress Know- 
 ledge, by the Greeks called Architechtonike, 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
 
 An Apology for Poetry 49 
 
 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 the Poet's nobleness, by setting him before 
 his other Competitors, among whom as principal 
 challengers step forth the Moral Philosophers, 
 whom, methinketh, I see coming towards 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 
 largess 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 its very being, its causes 
 and effects ; but also by making known its enemy 
 vice, which must be destroyed, and its cumbersome 
 servant Passion, which must be mastered, by 
 showing the generalities that containeth it, and 
 the specialities that are derived from it. Lastly, 
 by plain setting down how it extendeth 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 giveth leisure to the 
 Moralist to say so much, but that he laden with 
 
 E.L. D
 
 5o Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself 
 (for the most part) upon other histories, whose 
 greatest authorities are built upon the notable 
 foundation of hear-say, 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 goeth than how his own 
 wit runneth, curious for antiquities, and in- 
 quisitive 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 
 Lux vitae, Temporum Magistra, Vita memoriae, 
 Nuncia vetustatis, etc. 
 
 The Philosopher (saith he) teacheth a disputat- 
 ive virtue, but I do an active : his virtue is ex- 
 cellent in the dangerless Academy of Plato, but 
 mine showeth forth her honourable face in the 
 battles of Marathon, Pharsalia, Poitiers, and 
 Agincourt. He teacheth virtue by certain ab- 
 stract 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 light. 
 
 Then would he allege you innumerable ex- 
 amples, conferring story by story 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 maketh a point in
 
 An Apology for Poetry 5 1 
 
 this, that the one giveth the precept and the other 
 the example u . 
 
 Now, whom shall we find (since the question 
 standeth for the highest form in the School of 
 learning) to be Moderator ? Truly, as meseemeth, 
 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. There- 
 fore 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 it is ever 
 to be excepted, not only for having its 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, and Justice the chief of Virtues, yet 
 because he seeketh to make men good rather 
 Formidine pcence 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 
 
 11 The argument is sound, and it is eloquently stated : 
 moral philosophy teaches by precept, history by example, 
 the common aim of both being conduct ; the poet therefore 
 shall be compared with each, and, ' if he go beyond them 
 both, no other human skill can match him'. The know- 
 ledge-value of poetry, as a medium of truth, must always 
 rest on this proof.
 
 52 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 naughtiness away, and plant goodness even in the 
 secretest cabinet of our souls. And these four are 
 all that any way deal in that consideration of 
 men's manners, which being the supreme know- 
 ledge they that best breed it deserve the best com- 
 mendation. 
 
 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 argument the bare rule, 
 is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be con- 
 ceived, that one that hath no other guide but him 
 shall wade in him till 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 under- 
 stand. 
 
 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 in some one 
 by whom he presupposeth it was done. So that 
 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 descrip- 
 tion : which doth neither strike, pierce, nor
 
 An Apology for Poetry 53 
 
 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 shapes, 
 colour, bigness, and particular marks : or of a 
 gorgeous Palace, the Architecture, with 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 conceits, with being 
 witness to itself of a true lively knowledge : but 
 the same man, as soon as he might see those 
 beasts well painted, or the house well in model, 
 should straightways grow without need of any 
 description to a judicial comprehending of them, 
 so no doubt the Philosopher with his learned 
 definition, be it of virtue, vices, matters of public 
 policy, or private government, replenisheth the 
 memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom : 
 which notwithstanding, lie dark before the imagin- 
 ative and judging power, if they be not illuminated 
 or figured forth by the speaking picture of Poesy. 
 
 Tully * 2 taketh much pains, and many times 
 not without poetical helps, to make us know the 
 force love of our Country hath in us. Let us but 
 hear old Anchises speaking in the midst of Troy's 
 flames, or see Ulysses in the fullness of all Calypso's 
 delights bewail his absence from barren and 
 beggarly Ithaca. Anger, the Stoics say, was a 
 short madness ; let but Sophocles bring you Ajax 
 on a stage, killing and whipping Sheep and Oxen, 
 thinking them the Army of Greeks, with their 
 
 12 Cicero.
 
 54 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Chieftains Agamemnon and Menelaus, and tell 
 me if you have not a more familiar insight into 
 anger than finding in the Schoolmen its genus and 
 difference. See whether wisdom and temperance 
 in Ulysses and Diomedes, valour in Achilles, 
 friendship in Nisus, and Euryalus, even to an 
 ignorant man carry not an apparent shining : 
 and, contrarily, the remorse of conscience in 
 Oedipus, the soon-repenting pride of Agamemnon, 
 the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus, 
 the violence of ambition in the two Theban 
 brothers, the sour-sweetness of revenge in Medea, 
 and, to fall lower, the Terentian Gnato, and our 
 Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed that we now use 
 their names to signify their trades 13 . And finally, 
 all virtues, vices, and passions, so in their own 
 natural seats laid to the view that we seem not to 
 hear of them but clearly to see through them. 
 But even in the most excellent determination of 
 goodness, what Philosopher's counsel can so 
 readily direct a Prince as the feigned Cyrus in 
 Xenophon ?, or a virtuous man in all fortunes, 
 as Aeneas in Virgil ?, or a whole Commonwealth 
 as the way of Sir Thomas More's Utopia ? I say 
 the way, because where Sir Thomas More erred, it 
 was the fault of the man and not of the Poet, for 
 that way of patterning a Commonwealth was 
 
 13 Shakespeare's gallery of examples was to be added 
 in the next ten years to this list of personified precepts. 
 Othello as the type of jealousy ; Hamlet of indecision ; 
 Lear as the victim of filial ingratitude ; Juliet as a synonym 
 for Southern love ; Shylock for usury, and so forth, illus- 
 trate even more effectively than Sidney's allusions the 
 power of great poetry to represent the qualities which 
 moral philosophy defines.
 
 55 
 
 most absolute, though he perchance hath not so 
 absolutely performed it. For the question is, 
 whether the feigned image of Poesy or the regular 
 instruction of Philosophy hath the more force in 
 teaching : wherein if the Philosophers have more 
 rightly showed themselves Philosophers than the 
 Poets have attained to the high top of their pro- 
 fession, as in truth 
 
 Mediocribus esse poetis, 
 Non Di, non homines, non concessere Columnae 14 
 
 it is, I say again, not the fault of the Art but that 
 by few men that Art can be accomplished. 
 
 Certainly, even our Saviour Christ could as well 
 have given the moral commonplaces of uncharit- 
 ableness and humbleness as the divine narration 
 of Dives and Lazarus : or of disobedience and 
 mercy as that heavenly discourse of the lost 
 Child and the gracious Father ; but that his 
 thorough-searching wisdom knew the estate of 
 Dives burning in hell and of Lazarus being in 
 Abraham's bosom would more constantly (as it 
 were) inhabit both the memory and judgment. 
 Truly, for myself, meseems I see before my eyes 
 the lost Child's disdainful prodigality turned to 
 envy a Swine's dinner : which, by the learned 
 Divines, are thought not historical acts but in- 
 structing Parables. For conclusion, I say the 
 Philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, 
 so that the learned only can understand him. 
 
 14 Horace, Ars Poetica, 372-3. ' Nor gods, nor men, 
 nor the booksellers tolerate minor poets.' The ' column ' 
 was the pillar in front of the shop.
 
 56 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 That is to say, he teacheth them that are already 
 taught, but the Poet is the food for the tenderest 
 stomachs, the Poet is indeed the right Popular 
 Philosopher, whereof Aesop's tales give good 
 proof : whose pretty Allegories, stealing under the 
 formal tales of Beasts, make many, more beastly 
 than Beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue from 
 these dumb speakers. 
 
 But now may it be alleged that if this imagining 
 of matters be so fit for the imagination, then must 
 the Historian needs surpass, who bringeth you 
 images of true matters such as indeed were done, 
 and not such as fantastically or falsely may be 
 suggested to have been done. Truly Aristotle 
 himself in his discourse of Poesy plainly deter- 
 mineth this question, saying that Poetry is Philo- 
 sophoteron and Spoudaioteron, that is to say, it is 
 more philosophical and more studiously serious 
 than history. His reason is because Poesy dealeth 
 with Katholou, that is to say, with the universal 
 consideration ; and the history with Kathekaston, 
 the particular. Now, saith he, the universal 
 weighs what is fit to be said or done, either in 
 likelihood or necessity (which the Poesy considereth 
 in its imposed names), and the particular only 
 marks whether Alcibiades did, or suffered, this or 
 that. Thus far Aristotle : which reason of his 
 (as all his) is most full of reason. For indeed, if 
 the question were whether it were better to have 
 a particular act truly or falsely set down, there 
 is no doubt which is to be chosen, no more than 
 whether you had rather have Vespasian's picture 
 right as he was, or at the Painter's pleasure nothing 
 resembling. But if the question be for your own
 
 An Apology for Poetry 57 
 
 use and learning, whether it be better to have it 
 set down as it should be or as it was : then certainly 
 is more doctrinable the feigned Cyrus of Xenophon 
 than the true Cyrus in Justine : and the feigned 
 Aeneas in Virgil than the right Aeneas in Dares 
 Phrigius. 
 
 As to a Lady that desired to fashion her counten- 
 ance to the best grace a Painter should more 
 benefit her to portrait a most sweet face, writing 
 Canidia upon it, than to paint Canidia as she 
 was, who, Horace sweareth, was foul and ill- 
 favoured. 
 
 If the Poet do his part aright, he will show you 
 in Tantalus, Atreus, and such like, nothing that 
 is not to be shunned. In Cyrus, Aeneas, Ulysses, 
 each thing to be followed ; where the Historian, 
 bound to tell things as things were, cannot be 
 liberal (without he will be poetical) of a perfect 
 pattern : but, as in Alexander or Scipio himself, 
 show doings, some to be liked, some to be misliked. 
 And then how will you discern what to follow but 
 by your own discretion, which you had without 
 reading Quintus Curtius ? 
 
 And whereas a man may say : though in 
 universal consideration of doctrine the Poet 
 prevaileth, yet that the history, in its saying such 
 a thing was done, doth warrant a man more in that 
 he shall follow ; the answer is manifest, that if 
 he stand upon that was (as if he should argue, 
 because it rained yesterday, therefore it should 
 rain to-day) then indeed it hath some advantage 
 to a gross conceit. But if he know an example 
 only informs a conjectured likelihood, and so go 
 by reason, the Poet doth so far exceed him, that
 
 58 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 he is to frame his example to that which is most 
 reasonable : be it in warlike, politic or private 
 matters ; where the Historian in his bare ' was ' 
 hath many times that which we call fortune to 
 over-rule the best wisdom. Many times he must 
 tell events, whereof he can yield no cause : or if 
 he do, it must be poetical ; for that a feigned 
 example hath as much force to teach as a true 
 example : (for as for to move, it is clear, since the 
 feigned may be tuned to the highest key of passion) 
 let us take one example, wherein a Poet and a 
 Historian do concur. 
 
 Herodotus and Justine do both testify that 
 Zopirus, King Darius' faithful servant, seeing his 
 Master long resisted by the rebellious Babylonians, 
 feigned himself in extreme disgrace of his King, 
 for verifying of which, he caused his own nose and 
 ears to be cut off : and so flying to the Babylonians, 
 was received, and for his known valour so far 
 credited that he did find means to deliver them 
 over to Darius. Much like matter doth Livy 
 record of Tarquinius and his son. Xenophon 
 excellently feigneth such another stratagem, per- 
 formed by Abradates in Cyrus' behalf. Now 
 would I fain know, if occasion be presented unto 
 you to serve your Prince by such an honest dis- 
 simulation, why you do not as well learn it of 
 Xenophon's fiction as of the other's verity : and 
 truly so much the better, as you shall save your 
 nose by the bargain : for Abradates did not 
 counterfeit so far. So then the best of the His- 
 torian is subject to the Poet ; for whatsoever 
 action, or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or 
 war-stratagem the Historian is bound to recite,
 
 An Apology for Poetry 59 
 
 that may the Poet (if he list) with his imitation 
 make his own ; beautifying it both for further 
 teaching, and more delighting, as it pleaseth him : 
 having all, from Dante's heaven to his hell, under 
 the authority of his pen. Which if I be asked 
 what Poets have done so, as I might well name 
 some, yet say I, and say again, I speak of the Art 
 and not of the Artificer. 
 
 Now, to that which commonly is attributed to 
 the praise of histories, in respect of the notable 
 learning is gotten by marking the success, as 
 though therein a man should see virtue exalted, 
 and vice punished. Truly that commendation is 
 peculiar to Poetry, and far off from History. For 
 indeed Poetry ever setteth virtue so out in her 
 best colours, making Fortune her well-waiting 
 handmaid, that one must needs be enamoured of 
 her. Well may you see Ulysses in a storm and in 
 other hard plights ; but they are but exercises of 
 patience and magnanimity, to make them shine 
 the more in the near- folio wing prosperity. And 
 of the contrary part, if evil men come to the stage, 
 they ever go out (as the Tragedy- Writer answered 
 to one that misliked the show of such persons) so 
 manacled, as they little animate folks to follow 
 them. But the Historian, being captived to the 
 truth of a foolish world, is many times a terror 
 from well doing, and an encouragement to un- 
 bridled wickedness. 
 
 For see we not valiant Miltiades rot in his 
 fetters ? The just Phocion and the accomplished 
 Socrates put to death like Traitors ? The cruel 
 Severus live prosperously ? The excellent Severus 
 miserably murdered ? Sylla and Marius dying in
 
 60 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 their beds ? Pompey and Cicero slain then, when 
 they would have thought exile a happiness ? 
 
 See we not virtuous Cato driven to kill himself ? 
 and rebel Caesar so advanced that his name yet 
 after 1,600 years lasteth in the highest honour ? 
 And mark but even Caesar's own words of the fore- 
 named Sylla, (who in that only did honestly, to 
 put down his dishonest tyranny), Literas nescivit, 
 as if want of learning caused him to do well. He 
 meant it not by Poetry which, not content with 
 earthly plagues, deviseth new punishments in 
 hell for Tyrants : nor yet by Philosophy which 
 teacheth Occidendos esse, but no doubt by skill in 
 History : for that indeed can afford your Cypselus, 
 Periander, Phalaris, Dionysius, and I know not 
 how many more of the same kennel, that speed 
 well enough in their abominable injustice or 
 usurpation. I conclude, therefore, that he excelleth 
 History not only in furnishing the mind with 
 knowledge, but in setting it forward to that which 
 deserveth to be called and accounted good : 
 which setting forward, and moving to well doing, 
 indeed setteth the laurel crown upon the Poet as 
 victorious, not only of the Historian but over the 
 Philosopher : howsoever in teaching it may be 
 questionable. 
 
 For suppose it be granted (that which I suppose 
 with great reason may be denied) that the Philoso- 
 pher in respect of his methodical proceeding doth 
 teach more perfectly than the Poet : yet do I 
 think, that no man is so much Philophilosophos 1 5 
 as to compare the Philosopher in moving with the 
 
 Poet. 
 
 15 A partisan of philosophers.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 61 
 
 And that moving is of a higher degree than 
 teaching, it may by this appear : that it is well 
 nigh the cause and the effect of teaching. For 
 who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire 
 to be taught ? ; and what so much good doth that 
 teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) 
 as that it moveth one to do that which it doth 
 teach ? For, as Aristotle saith, it is not Gnosis, 
 but Praxis must be the fruit. And how Praxis 
 cannot be without being moved to practice it is 
 no hard matter to consider. 
 
 The Philosopher showeth you the way, he 
 informeth you of the particularities as well of the 
 tediousness of the way as of the pleasant lodging 
 you shall have when your journey is ended, as of 
 the many by-turnings that may divert you from 
 your way. But this is to no man but to him that 
 will read him, and read him with attentive studious 
 painfulness. Which constant desire whosoever 
 hath in him, hath already passed half the hardness 
 of the way, and therefore is beholding to the 
 Philosopher but for the other half. Nay truly, 
 learned men have learnedly thought that where 
 once reason hath so much over-mastered passion 
 as that the mind hath a free desire to do well, the 
 inward light each mind hath in itself is as good as 
 a Philosopher's book ; seeing in nature we know 
 it is well to do well, and what is well, and what is 
 evil, although not in the words of Art, which 
 Philosophers bestow upon us. For out of natural 
 conceit the Philosophers drew it, but to be moved 
 to do that which we know, or to be moved with 
 desire to know, Hoc opus : Hie labor est. 
 
 Now therein of all Sciences (I speak still of
 
 62 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 humane, and according to the humane conceits) 
 is our Poet the Monarch 16 . 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 first give you a cluster of 
 Grapes : that, full of that taste, you may long 
 to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure 
 definitions, which must blur the margent with 
 interpretations and load the memory with doubt- 
 fulness : but he cometh to you with words sent 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, pre- 
 tending 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 Aloes or Rhubarb they should 
 receive, would sooner take their Physic at their ears 
 than at their mouth. So is it in men (most of 
 which 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, and Aeneas : 
 and, hearing them, must needs hear the right 
 description of wisdom, valour and justice ; which, 
 if they had been barely, that is to say, philoso- 
 
 16 The proposition stated on p. 51 is now proved. 
 See note u in loc. Sidney next goes on to the delight of 
 poetry.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 63 
 
 phically set out, they would swear they be brought 
 to school again. 
 
 That imitation, whereof Poetry is, hath the 
 most conveniency to Nature of all other, insomuch 
 that, as Aristotle saith, those things which in 
 themselves are horrible, as cruel battles, unnatural 
 Monsters, are made in poetical imitation delightful. 
 Truly I have known men that even with reading 
 Amadis de Gaule (which God knoweth wanteth 
 much of a perfect Poesy) have found their hearts 
 moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and 
 especially courage. 
 
 Who readeth Aeneas carrying old Anchises on 
 his back that wisheth not it were his fortune to 
 perform so excellent an act ? Whom do not the 
 words of Turnus move ? the tale of Turnus, 
 having planted his image in the imagination, 
 
 Fugientem hsec terra videbit, 
 Usque adeone mori miserum est ? 
 
 Where the Philosophers as they scorn to delight, 
 so must they be content little to move : saving 
 wrangling, whether Virtue be the chief or the only 
 good : whether the contemplative or the active life 
 do excel : which Plato and Boethius well knew, 
 and therefore made Mistress Philosophy very often 
 borrow the masking raiment of Poesy. For even 
 those hard-hearted evil men who think virtue a 
 school name, and know no other good but indulgere 
 genio, and therefore despise the austere admoni- 
 tions of the Philosopher, and feel not the inward 
 reason they stand upon ; yet will be content to be 
 delighted : which is all the goodfellow Poet
 
 64 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 seemeth to promise : and so steal to see the form 
 of goodness (which seen they cannot but love) 
 ere themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine 
 of cherries. Infinite proofs of the strange effects 
 of this poetical invention might be alleged, only 
 two shall serve, which are so often remembered, 
 as I think all men know them. 
 
 The one of Menenius Agrippa, who when the 
 whole people of Rome had resolutely divided 
 themselves from the Senate, with apparent show 
 of utter ruin : though he were (for that time) an 
 excellent Orator, came not among them upon 
 trust of figurative speeches or cunning insinua- 
 tions : and much less, with far-set Maxims of 
 Philosophy which (especially if they were Platonic) 
 they must have learned Geometry before they 
 could well have conceived : but, forsooth, he 
 behaves himself like a homely and familiar Poet. 
 He telleth them a tale, that there was a time when 
 all the parts of the body made a mutinous con- 
 spiracy against the belly, which they thought 
 devoured the fruits of each other's labour : they 
 concluded they would let so unprofitable a spender 
 starve. In the end, to be short (for the tale is 
 notorious, and as notorious that it was a tale), 
 with punishing the belly they plagued themselves. 
 This applied by him wrought such effect in the 
 people as I never read that ever words brought 
 forth but then, so sudden and so good an alteration ; 
 for upon reasonable conditions, a perfect recon- 
 cilement ensued. The other is of Nathan the 
 Prophet, who when the holy David had so far 
 forsaken God as to confirm adultery with murder ; 
 when he was to do the tenderest office of a friend
 
 An Apology for Poetry 65 
 
 in laying his own shame before his eyes, sent by 
 God to call again so chosen a servant, how doth he 
 it ? but by telling of a man, whose beloved Lamb 
 was ungratefully taken from his bosom : the 
 application most divinely true, but the discourse 
 itself feigned : which made David (I speak of the 
 second and instrumental cause), as in a glass, to 
 see his own filthiness, as that heavenly Psalm of 
 mercy well testifieth. 
 
 By these therefore examples and reasons I 
 think it may be manifest that the Poet with that 
 same hand of delight doth draw the mind more 
 effectually than any other Art doth, and so a 
 conclusion not unfitly ensueth 17 : that, as virtue 
 
 17 Sidney's meaning is that the most efficacious incen- 
 tive to virtuous action is not derived from the cold maxims 
 of philosophy, but from the inspiring illustrations of the 
 poets. George Herbert, the devout Anglican poet of the 
 seventeenth century, expresses a similar sentiment in his 
 Church Porch, where he writes : 
 
 A verse may find him whom a sermon flies, 
 And turn delight into a sacrifice, 
 
 thus converting the delight which Sidney properly empha- 
 sizes as the aim of poetry to a moral purpose. That 
 poetry should affect conduct is a sound principle of criti- 
 cism, though Sidney and these early critics present the 
 argument somewhat raggedly. They have not yet formu- 
 lated the general proposition that religion, poetry and 
 philosophy speak different languages, pursue truth along 
 different roads, and employ each a different medium of 
 expression. Matthew Arnold's paper on ' The Study of 
 Poetry,' in his Essays in Criticism, should be consulted 
 at this point, together with a sentence from his Literature 
 and Dogma : ' The language of the Bible is literary, not 
 scientific language ; language thrown out at an object of 
 consciousness not fully grasped, which inspired emotion. 
 Evidently, if the object be one not fully to be grasped, 
 and one to inspire emotion, the language of figure and 
 feeling will satisfy us better about it, will cover more of 
 E.L. E
 
 66 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 is the most excellent resting-place for all worldly 
 learning to make its end of, so Poetry, being the 
 most familiar to teach it, and most princely to move 
 towards it, in the most excellent work, is the most 
 excellent workman. But I am content, not only 
 to decipher it by its works (although works, in 
 commendation or dispraise, must ever hold a 
 high authority), but more narrowly will examine 
 its parts : so that (as in a man) though altogether 
 may carry a presence full of majesty and beauty, 
 perchance in some one defectious piece we may 
 find a blemish. Now, in its parts, kinds, or 
 Species (as you list to term them), it is to be noted, 
 that some Poesies have coupled together two or 
 three kinds, as Tragical and Comical, whereupon 
 is risen the Tragi-comical. Some in the like 
 manner have mingled Prose and Verse, as Sanazzar 
 and Boetius. Some have mingled matters Hero- 
 ical and Pastoral. But that cometh all to one in 
 this question, for, if severed they be good, the 
 conjunction cannot be hurtful. Therefore per- 
 chance forgetting some, and leaving some as 
 needless to be remembered, it shall not be amiss 
 in a word to cite the special kinds, to see what 
 faults may be found in the right use of them 18 . 
 
 what we seek to express, than the language of literal fact 
 and science. The language of science about it will be 
 below what we feel to be the truth'. 
 
 18 The value of the following paragraphs is largely dis- 
 counted by the fact that they are couched in a tone of 
 apology. Among other mischief wrought by Stephen 
 Gosson in his pamphlet on The School of Abuse is the 
 necessity under which Sidney felt himself placed and 
 .under which he consciously laboured, of defending poetry 
 instead of criticizing it. He had to repel destructive 
 criticism instead of writing constructive criticism. This
 
 An Apology for Poetry 67 
 
 Is it then the Pastoral Poem which is misliked ? 
 (for perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they 
 will soonest leap over). Is the poor pipe dis- 
 dained, which sometimes out of Meliboeus' mouth 
 can show the misery of people under hard Lords 
 or ravening Soldiers ? And, again, by Tityrus 
 what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest 
 from the goodness of them that sit highest ? 
 Sometimes, under the pretty tales of Wolves and 
 Sheep, can include the whole considerations of 
 wrong doing and patience. Sometimes show that 
 contention for trifles can get but a trifling victory. 
 Where perchance a man may see that even Alex- 
 ander and Darius, when they strove who should 
 be cock of this world's dunghill, the benefit they 
 got, was, that the after-livers may say, 
 
 Haec memini et victum frustra contendere Thirsin : 
 Ex illo Coridon, Condon est tempore nobis. 
 
 Or is it the lamenting Elegiac, which in a kind 
 heart would move rather pity than blame, who 
 bewails with the great Philosopher Heraclitus the 
 weakness of mankind, and the wretchedness of 
 the world : who surely is to be praised, either for 
 compassionate accompanying just causes of lamen- 
 tation, or for rightly pointing out how weak be 
 the passions of wofulness. Is it the bitter but 
 
 source of confusion gives an antiquated air to such phrases 
 as ' is it the pastoral poem which is misliked ? ', ' the 
 elegiac in a kind heart would move rather pity than 
 blame ', ' the heroical, whose very name should daunt all 
 backbiters ', etc. It is not difficult, however, to disengage 
 the permanent elements from these marks of ephemeral 
 controversy.
 
 68 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 wholesome Iambic, which rubs the galled mind, in 
 making shame the trumpet of villany, with bold 
 and open crying out against naughtiness ; or the 
 Satiric, who 
 
 Omne vafer vitium ridenti tangit amico ? 
 
 who sportingly never leaveth, until he make a man 
 laugh at folly, and, at length ashamed, to laugh 
 at himself : which he cannot avoid without 
 avoiding the folly. Who while 
 
 Circum praecordia ludit 
 
 giveth us to feel how many head-aches a passionate 
 life bringeth us to. How when all is done, 
 
 Est ulubris animus si nos non deficit aequus ? 3 
 
 No : perchance it is the Comic whom naughty 
 Play-makers and Stage-keepers have justly made 
 odious. To the argument of abuse 19 , I will 
 answer after. Only thus much now is to be said, 
 that the Comedy is an imitation of the common 
 errors of our life which he representeth in the 
 most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be. 
 So that it is impossible that any beholder can be 
 content to be such a one. 
 
 Now, as in Geometry the oblique must be known 
 as well as the right ; and, in Arithmetic, the odd 
 as well as the even, so in the actions of our life, 
 who seeth not the filthiness of evil wanteth a great 
 foil to perceive the beauty of virtue 20 . This doth 
 
 19 A nearly direct reference to The School of Abuse. 
 
 20 This is a sound principle of morals and of art. The
 
 An Apology for Poetry 69 
 
 the Comedy handle so in our private and domestic 
 matters that, with hearing it, we get as it were 
 an experience what is to be looked for of a niggardly 
 Demea : of a crafty Danus : of a flattering Gnato : 
 of a vainglorious Thraso : and not only to know 
 what effects are to be expected, but to know who 
 be such, by the signifying badge given them by 
 the Comedian. And little reason hath any man 
 to say that men learn evil by seeing it so set out : 
 since, as I said before, there is no man living but, 
 by the force truth hath in nature, no sooner seeth 
 these men play their parts, but wisheth them in 
 Pistrinum : although perchance the sack of his 
 own faults lie so behind his back that he seeth not 
 himself dance the same measure : whereto yet 
 nothing can more open his eyes, than to find his 
 own actions contemptibly set forth. So that the 
 right use of Comedy will (I think) by nobody be 
 blamed, and much less of the high and excellent 
 Tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and 
 showeth forth the Vicers that are covered with 
 Tissue : that maketh Kings fear to be Tyrants, and 
 Tyrants manifest their tyrannical humours : that 
 with stirring the affects of admiration and com- 
 miseration teacheth the uncertainty of this world, 
 and upon how weak foundations gilded roofs are 
 builded. That maketh us know 
 
 Qui sceptra saevus duro imperio regit 
 Timet timentes, metus in auctorem redit. 
 
 moral canon is stated in Ps. viii. 5 : ' Depart from evil and 
 do good ' ; a statement of the aesthetic canon will be found 
 in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds : ' It is in art as 
 in morals : no character would inspire us with an enthusi- 
 astic admiration of his virtue if that virtue consisted
 
 7O Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 But how much it can move Plutarch yieldeth 
 a notable testimony, of the abominable Tyrant, 
 Alexander Pherceus ; from whose eyes a Tragedy 
 well made and represented drew abundance of 
 tears : who without all pity had murdered infinite 
 numbers, and some of his own blood. So that he, 
 that was not ashamed to make matters for 
 Tragedies, yet could not resist the sweet violence 
 of a Tragedy. 
 
 And if it wrought no further good in him, it was 
 that he, in despite of himself, withdrew himself 
 from barkening to that which might mollify his 
 hardened heart. But it is not the Tragedy they 
 do mislike : for it were too absurd to cast out so 
 excellent a representation of whatsoever is most 
 worthy to be learned. 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 gives 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 my 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 is it sung but by some blind Crowder 21 , with 
 no rougher voice than rude style : which, being 
 so evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that 
 uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the 
 gorgeous eloquence of Pindar ? In Hungary I 
 
 only in an absence of vice. Simplicity, when so very 
 inartificial as to seem to evade the difficulties of art, is a 
 very suspicious virtue '. 
 
 21 Fiddler.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 71 
 
 have seen it the manner at all Feasts, and other 
 such meetings, to have songs of their Ancestors' 
 valour ; which that right Soldier-like Nation think 
 the chiefest kindlers of brave courage. The in- 
 comparable Lacedaemonians did not only carry 
 that kind of Music ever with them to the field, but 
 even at home, as such songs were made, so were 
 they all content to be the singers of them, when the 
 lusty men were to tell what they did, the old men 
 what they had done, and the young men what they 
 would do. And where a man may say that Pindar 
 many times praiseth highly victories of small 
 moment, matters rather of sport than virtue : as 
 it may be answered, it was the fault of the Poet, 
 and not of the Poetry ; so indeed, the chief fault 
 was in the time and custom of the Greeks, who 
 set those toys at so high a price, that Philip of 
 Macedon reckoned a horse-race won at Olympus 
 among his three fearful felicities. But as the 
 inimitable Pindar 22 often did, so is that kind most 
 capable and most fit to awake the thoughts from 
 the sleep of idleness, to embrace honourable enter- 
 prises. 
 There rests the Heroical, whose very name (I 
 
 22 Pindar's odes are not, perhaps, so popular now as 
 then ; in the eighteenth century poems were frequently 
 cast in the form of ' Pindaric odes ', e.g. by Gray and 
 Collins. The irregular metrical licences were a great 
 temptation. Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of 
 Immortality, and Tennyson's On the Death of the Duke of 
 Wellington are the most recent examples. 
 
 As to the ' matters rather of sport than virtue ', modern 
 England may be compared with ancient Greece in that 
 aspect ; and a parallel could be found in recent times to 
 Philip of Macedon, who counted a ' winner ' at a horse- 
 race as one of his three chief triumphs.
 
 72 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 think) should daunt all back-biters ; for by what 
 conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil of 
 that which draweth with it no less Champions than 
 Achilles, Cyras, Aeneas, Turnus, Tydeus, and 
 Rinaldo?; who doth not only teach and move to 
 a truth, but teacheth and moveth to the most high 
 and excellent truth. Who maketh magnanimity 
 and justice shine throughout 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 sets 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. Only let 
 Aeneas be worn in the tablet of your memory, how 
 he governeth himself in the ruin of his Country, in 
 the preserving his old Father, and carrying away 
 his religious ceremonies : in obeying the gods' 
 commandment 23 to leave Dido, though not only 
 all passionate kindness, but even the human 
 consideration of virtuous gratefulness would have 
 craved other of him. How in storms, how in 
 
 23 Multa gemens, magnoque animum labefactus amore, 
 jussa tamen divom exsequitur. Aeneid iv. 395-6. 
 
 The whole passage, with its magnificent exaltation of 
 the ancient virtue of piety, should be consulted.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 73 
 
 sports, how in war, how in peace, how a fugitive, 
 how victorious, how besieged, how besieging, how 
 to strangers, how to allies, how to enemies, how 
 to his own : lastly, how in his inward self, and how 
 in his outward government. And I think, in a 
 mind not prejudiced with a prejudicating humour, 
 he will be found in excellency fruitful : yea, even 
 as Horace saith 
 
 Melius Chrisippo et Crantore. 
 
 But truly I imagine, it falleth out with these 
 Poet-whippers as with some good women, who 
 often are sick, but in faith they cannot tell where. 
 So the name of Poetry is odious to them, but 
 neither its cause, nor effects, neither the sum that 
 contains it, nor the particularities descending from 
 it, give any fast handle to their carping dispraise. 
 Since then Poetry is of all humane learning the 
 most ancient, and of most fatherly antiquity, as 
 from whence other learnings have taken their 
 beginnings : since it is so universal that no learned 
 Nation doth despise it, nor no barbarous Nation 
 is without it : since both Roman and Greek gave 
 divine names unto it : the one of prophesying, the 
 other of making. And that indeed, that name of 
 making is fit for it ; considering that, whereas 
 other Arts retain themselves within their subject, 
 and receive, as it were, their being from it : the 
 Poet only bringeth his own stuff, and doth not 
 learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh matter 
 for a conceit : Since neither his description nor his 
 end containeth any evil, the thing described 
 cannot be evil : Since his effects be so good as to
 
 74 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 teach goodness and to delight the learners : Since 
 therein (namely in moral doctrine, the chief of all 
 knowledges) he doth not only far pass the His- 
 torian, but for instructing is well nigh comparable 
 to the Philosopher : and for moving, leaves him 
 behind him : Since the holy scripture (wherein 
 there is no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it 
 poetical, and that even our Saviour Christ vouch- 
 safed to use the flowers of it : Since all his kinds 
 are not only in their united forms but in their 
 fevered dissections fully commendable, I think 
 (and think, I think, rightly) the Laurel crown 
 appointed for triumphing Captains doth worthily 
 (of all other learnings) honour the Poets' triumph. 
 But because we have ears as well as tongues, and 
 that the lightest reasons that may be will seem to 
 weigh greatly, if nothing be put in the counter- 
 balance : let us hear and, as well as we can, ponder 
 what objections may be made against this Art, 
 which may be worthy either of yielding or answer- 
 ing. 
 
 First truly I note, not only in these Mysomousoi 
 Poet-haters, but in all that kind of people who seek 
 a praise by dispraising others, that they do prodi- 
 gally spend a great many wandering words in 
 quips and scoffs ; carping and taunting at each 
 thing, which by stirring the spleen may stay the 
 brain from a thorough beholding the worthiness of 
 the subject. 
 
 Those kind M of objections, as they are full of 
 very idle easiness, since there is nothing of so sacred 
 
 84 Correct grammar requires that kind. ' Those kind 
 of ' things is still a vulgar error to-day.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 75 
 
 a majesty but that an itching tongue may rub 
 itself upon it : so deserve they no other answer 
 but instead of laughing at the jest to laugh at the 
 jester. We know a playing wit can praise the 
 discretion of an Ass ; the comfortableness of being 
 in debt, and the jolly commodity of being sick of 
 the plague. So of the contrary side, if we will 
 turn Ovid's verse, 
 
 Ut lateat virtus proximitate mail, 
 
 that good lie hid in nearness of the evil, Agrippa 
 will be as merry in showing the vanity of Science, as 
 Erasmus was in commending of folly. Neither 
 shall any man or matter escape some touch of these 
 smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, 
 they had another foundation than the superficial 
 part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant 
 Fault-finders, who will correct the Verb before they 
 understand the Noun, and confute others' know- 
 ledge before they confirm their own, I would have 
 them only remember that scoffing cometh not of 
 wisdom. So that the best title in true English 
 they get with their merriments is to be called 
 good fools : for so have our grave Forefathers ever 
 termed that humorous kind of jesters : but that 
 which giveth greatest scope to their scorning hu- 
 mours, is rhyming and versing. It is already 
 said (and as I think truly said) it is not rhyming 
 and versing that maketh Poesy. One may be a 
 Poet without versing and a versifier without Poetry. 
 But yet, presuppose it were inseparable (as indeed 
 it seemeth Scaliger judgeth) truly it were an 
 inseparable commendation. For if Oratio next to
 
 76 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Ratio, Speech next to Reason, be the greatest gift 
 bestowed upon mortality, that cannot be praise- 
 less which doth most polish that blessing of speech, 
 which considers each word not only (as a man may 
 say) by its forcible quality, but by its best measured 
 quantity, carrying even in themselves a Harmony : 
 (without perchance Number, Measure, Order, 
 Proportion, be in our time grown odious). But 
 lay aside the just praise it hath by being the only 
 fit speech for Music (Music I say, the most divine 
 striker of the senses) : thus much is undoubtedly 
 true, that if reading be foolish without remem- 
 bering, memory being the only treasurer of know- 
 ledge, those words which are fittest for memory 
 are likewise most convenient for knowledge. 
 
 Now, that Verse far exceedeth Prose in the 
 knitting up of the memory, the reason is manifest. 
 The words (besides their delight which hath a 
 great affinity to memory) being so set as one 
 word cannot be lost but the whole work fails : 
 which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance 
 back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth 
 it ; besides one word so as it were begetting 
 another, as be it in rhyme or measured verse, by 
 the former a man shall have a near guess to the 
 follower : lastly, even they that have taught the 
 Art of memory have showed nothing so apt for 
 it as a certain room divided into many places 
 well and thoroughly known. Now, that hath the 
 verse in effect perfectly : every word having its 
 natural seat, which seat must needs make the words 
 remembered. But what needeth more in a thing 
 so known to all men ? Who is it that ever was a 
 scholar that doth not carry away some verses of
 
 An Apology for Poetry 77 
 
 Virgil, Horace, or Cato, which in his youth he 
 learned, and even to his old age serve him for 
 hourly lessons ? But the fitness it hath for memory 
 is notably proved by all delivery of Arts : wherein 
 for the most part, from Grammar, to Logic, 
 Mathematic, Physic, and the rest, the rules chiefly 
 necessary to be borne away are compiled in verses. 
 So that, verse being in itself sweet and orderly, 
 and being best for memory, the only handle of 
 knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can 
 speak against it. 
 
 Now then go we to the most important imputa- 
 tions laid to the poor Poets, for aught I can yet 
 learn, they are these : first, that there being many 
 other more fruitful knowledges, a man might better 
 spend his time in them than in this. Secondly, 
 that it is the mother of lies. Thirdly, that it is 
 the Nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent 
 desires : with a Siren's sweetness drawing the 
 mind to the Serpent's tale of sinful fancy. And 
 herein especially Comedies give the largest field 
 to err, as Chaucer saith : how both in other Nations 
 and in ours, before Poets did soften us, we were 
 full of courage, given to martial exercises ; the 
 pillars of manlike liberty, and not lulled asleep in 
 shady idleness with Poets' pastimes. And lastly, 
 and chiefly, they cry out with an open mouth, as 
 if they outshot Robin Hood, that Plato banished 
 them out of his Commonwealth. Truly, this is 
 much, if there be much truth in it. First to the 
 first : that a man might better spend his time, is a 
 reason indeed : but it doth (as they say) but peteve 
 principium : for if it be as I affirm, that no learning 
 is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to
 
 78 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 virtue ; and that none can both teach and move 
 thereto so much as Poetry : then is the conclusion 
 manifest, that Ink and Paper cannot be to a more 
 profitable purpose employed. And certainly, 
 though a man should grant their first assumption, 
 it should follow (methinks) very unwillingly that 
 good is not good because better is better. But I 
 still and utterly deny that there is sprung out of 
 earth a more fruitful knowledge. To the second 
 therefore, that they should be the principal liars, 
 I answer paradoxically, but truly I think truly 
 that of all writers under the sun the Poet is the 
 least liar : and though he would, as a Poet can 
 scarcely be a liar, the Astronomer, with his cousin 
 the Geometrician, can hardly escape, when they 
 take upon them to measure the height of the stars. 
 How often, think you, do the Physicians lie, 
 when they aver things good for sicknesses which 
 afterwards send Charon a great number of souls 
 drowned in a potion before they come to his Ferry ? 
 And no less of the rest which take upon them to 
 affirm. Now, for the Poet, he nothing affirms, 
 and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie 
 is to affirm that to be true which is false. So as 
 the other Artists, and especially the Historian, 
 affirming many things, can in the cloudy knowledge 
 of mankind hardly escape from many lies. But 
 the Poet (as I said before) never affirmeth. 
 The Poet never maketh any circles about your 
 imagination to conjure you to believe for true what 
 he writes. He citeth not authorities of other 
 Histories, but, even for his entry, calleth the 
 sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention : 
 in troth, not labouring to tell you what is, or is
 
 An Apology for Poetry 79 
 
 not, but what should or should not be : and 
 therefore, though he recount things not true, yet 
 because he telleth them not for true, he lieth not, 
 without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, 
 before alleged to David. Which as a wicked man 
 durst scarce say, so think I none so simple would 
 say that Aesop lied in the tales of his beasts : for 
 who thinks that Aesop wrote it for actually true 
 were well worthy to have his name chronicled 
 among the beasts he writeth of 26 . 
 
 What child is there that, coming to a Play, and 
 seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old 
 door, doth believe that it is Thebes ? If then a 
 man can arrive at that child's age to know that 
 the Poets' persons and doings are but pictures what 
 should be, and not stories what have been, they 
 will never give the lie to things not affirmatively 
 but allegorically and figuratively written. And 
 therefore, as in History, looking for truth, they 
 go away full fraught with falsehood : so in Poetry, 
 looking for fiction, they shall use the narration 
 but as an imaginative groundplot of a profitable 
 invention. 
 
 But hereto is replied that the Poets give names 
 to men they write of, which argueth a conceit of 
 an actual truth, and so, not being true, proves a 
 falsehood. And doth the Lawyer lie then, when 
 
 25 On the question of poetic truth, see note 17, p. 65, 
 supra. See also the section ' Poetic Truth ' in Magnus, 
 Introduction to Poetry (Murray), and Beeching, The Study 
 of Poetry (Univ. Press, Cambridge). These paragraphs 
 are full of Gosson, and Sidney's tone is too apologetic for 
 the dignity of his theme, though in the word ' figur- 
 atively ' below he anticipates Matthew Arnold's dictum 
 about ' the language of figure and feeling '.
 
 8o Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 under the names of John-a-stile and John-a-noakes 
 he puts his case 28 ? But that is easily answered. 
 Their naming of men is but to make their picture 
 the more lively, and not to build any history : 
 painting men, they cannot leave men nameless. 
 We see we cannot play at Chess but that we must 
 give names to our Chess-men ; and yet methinks 
 he were a very partial Champion of truth that 
 would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the 
 reverend title of a Bishop. The Poet nameth 
 Cyrus or Aeneas no other way than to show what 
 men of their fames, fortunes and estates should do. 
 Their third is, how much it abuseth men's wit, 
 training it to wanton sinfulness and lustful love : 
 for indeed that is the principal, if not the only 
 abuse I can hear alleged. They say, the Comedies 
 rather teach than reprehend amorous conceits. 
 They say, the Lyric is larded with passionate 
 Sonnets. The Elegiac weeps the want of his 
 mistress. And that even to the Heroical Cupid 
 hath ambitiously climbed. Alas, Love ! I would 
 thou couldst as well defend thyself as thou canst 
 offend others. I would those on whom thou dost 
 attend could either put thee away or yield good 
 reason why they keep thee. But grant love of 
 beauty to be a beastly fault (although it be very 
 hard, since only man, and no beast, hath that gift, 
 to discern beauty) ; grant that lovely name of 
 Love to deserve all hateful reproaches (although 
 even some of my Masters the Philosophers spent a 
 good deal of their Lamp-oil in setting forth the 
 
 28 The ' John Doe ' and ' John Roe ' of modern legal 
 fiction.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 81 
 
 excellence of it) ; grant, I say, whatsoever they 
 will have granted ; that not only love, but lust, 
 but vanity, but (if they list) scurrility possesseth 
 many leaves of the Poets' books : yet think I, 
 when this is granted, they will find their sentence 
 may with good manners put the last words fore- 
 most : and not say that Poetry abuseth man's wit, 
 but that man's wit abuseth Poetry. 
 
 For I will not deny but that man's wit may 
 make Poesy (which should be Eikastike, which 
 some learned have defined figuring forth good 
 things) to be Phantastike : which doth, contrari- 
 wise, infect the fancy with unworthy objects. 
 As the Painter that should give to the eye either 
 some excellent perspective or some fine picture, 
 fit for building or fortification : or containing in 
 it some notable example, as Abraham sacrificing 
 his son Isaac, Judith killing Holofernes, David 
 fighting with Goliath, may leave those, and please 
 an ill-pleased eye with wanton shows of better 
 hidden matters. But what, shall the abuse of a 
 thing make the right use odious ? Nay truly, 
 though I yield that Poesy may not only be abused, 
 but that being abused, by the reason of its sweet- 
 charming force, it can do more hurt than any 
 other Army of words : yet shall it be so far from 
 concluding that the abuse should give reproach to 
 the abused, that contrariwise it is a good reason 
 that, whatsoever being abused doth most harm, 
 being rightly used (and upon the right use each 
 thing conceiveth his title) doth most good. 
 
 Do we not see the skill of Physic (the best 
 rampire 27 to our often-assaulted bodies), being 
 
 27 Rampart. 
 E.L. F
 
 82 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 abused, teach poison the most violent destroyer ? 
 Doth not knowledge of Law, whose end is to even 
 and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked 
 fosterer of horrible injuries ? Doth not (to go to 
 the highest) God's word abused breed heresy ? and 
 His Name abused become blasphemy ? Truly, 
 a needle cannot do much hurt, and as truly (with 
 leave of Ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much 
 good. 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 
 the Fathers of lies they say 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 hath set their hearts' 
 delight upon action, and not upon imagination : 
 rather doing things worthy to be written than 
 writing things fit to be done. What that before- 
 time was I think scarcely Sphinx can tell : since no 
 memory is so ancient that hath the precedence of 
 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 is it 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 on it: ' No ', said another 
 very gravely, ' take heed what you do, for while 
 they are busy about these toys, we shall with more 
 leisure conquer their Countries '.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 83 
 
 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 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 with Horace to him that is of that opinion 
 
 Jubeo stultum esse libenter ; 
 
 for as for Poetry itself, it is the freest from this 
 objection. For Poetry is the companion of the 
 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 
 received their first motions of courage. Only 
 Alexander's example may serve, who by Plutarch 
 is accounted of such virtue that Fortune was not 
 his guide but his foot-stool ; 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
 
 84 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Philosopher Calisthenes to death for his seeming 
 philosophical, indeed mutinous, stubbornness. But 
 the chief thing he ever was 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 Forti- 
 tude : 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 well 
 sacrificed to the Graces. He misliked and cried out 
 upon all Greek learning, and yet being eighty 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 Africa, so loved him that they caused 
 his body to be buried in their Sepulchre. So 
 that Cato, his authority being but against his 
 person, and that answered, with so far greater 
 than himself, is herein of no validity. 
 
 But now indeed my burthen is great ; now 
 Plato's name is laid upon me, whom I must confess, 
 of all Philosophers, I have ever esteemed most 
 worthy of reverence, and with great reason, since
 
 An Apology for Poetry 85 
 
 of all Philosophers he is the most poetical. Yet ii 
 he will defile the Fountain out of which his flowing 
 streams have proceeded, let us boldly examine 
 with what reasons he did it. First truly, a man 
 might maliciously object that Plato being a 
 Philosopher was a natural enemy of Poets : for 
 indeed, after the Philosophers had picked out of 
 the sweet mysteries of Poetry the right discerning 
 true points of knowledge, they forthwith putting 
 it in method, and making a School-art of that 
 which the Poets did only teach by a divine delight- 
 fulness, beginning to spurn at their guides, like 
 ungrateful Prentices, were not content to set up 
 shops for themselves, but sought by all means 
 to discredit their Masters. Which by the force 
 of delight being barred them, the less they could 
 overthrow them the more they hated them. For 
 indeed, they found for Homer seven Cities strove 
 who should have him for their Citizen : where 
 many Cities banished Philosophers, as not fit 
 members to live among them. For only repeating 
 certain of Euripides' verses many Athenians had 
 their lives saved of the Syracusans, when the 
 Athenians themselves thought many Philosophers 
 unworthy to live. 
 
 Certain Poets, as Simonides and Pindar had 
 so prevailed with Hiero the First, that of a Tyrant 
 they made him a just King, where Plato could 
 do so little with Dionysius, that he himself, of a 
 Philosopher was made a slave. But who should 
 do thus, I confess, should requite the objections 
 made against Poets, with like cavillation against 
 Philosophers, as likewise one should do that 
 should bid one read Ph&drus, or Symposium in
 
 86 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Plato, or the discourse of love in Plutarch, and 
 see whether any Poet do authorize abominable 
 filthiness as they do. Again, a man might ask 
 out of what Commonwealth Plato did banish 
 them, insooth, thence where he himself alloweth 
 community of women. So that belike this 
 banishment grew not for effeminate wantonness, 
 since little should poetical Sonnets be hurtful, when 
 a man might have what woman he listed. But I 
 honour philosophical instructions, and bless the 
 wits which bred them : so that they be not abused, 
 which is likewise stretched to Poetry. 
 
 St. Paul himself (who yet for the credit of 
 Poets allegeth twice two Poets, and one of them 
 by the name of a Prophet) setteth a watchword 
 upon Philosophy, indeed upon the abuse. So 
 doth Plato upon the abuse, not upon Poetry. 
 Plato found fault that the Poets of his time filled 
 the world with wrong opinions of the Gods, making 
 light tales of that unspotted essence ; and there- 
 fore would not have the youth depraved with such 
 opinions. Herein may much be said, let this 
 suffice : the Poets did not induce such opinions, 
 but did imitate those opinions already induced. 
 For all the Greek stories can well testify that the 
 very religion of that time stood upon many and 
 many-fashioned Gods, not taught so by the Poets, 
 but followed, according to their nature of imitation. 
 Who list may read in Plutarch the discourses of 
 Isis and Osiris of the cause why Oracles ceased, of 
 the divine providence : and see whether the 
 Theology of that nation stood not upon such 
 dreams, which the Poets indeed superstitiously 
 observed, and truly (since they had not the light of
 
 An Apology for Poetry 87 
 
 Christ) did much better in it than the Philosophers 
 who, shaking off superstition, brought in Atheism. 
 Plato therefore (whose authority I had much 
 rather justly construe than unjustly resist) meant 
 not in general of Poets, in those words of which 
 Julius Scaliger 28 saith Qua authoritate, barbari 
 quidam, atque hispidi, abuti velint, ad Poetas e 
 republica exigendos : but only meant, to drive 
 out those wrong opinions of the Deity (whereof 
 now, without further law, Christianity hath taken 
 away all the hurtful belief) perchance (as he 
 thought) nourished by the then esteemed Poets. 
 And a man need go no further than to Plato 
 himself to know his meaning : who in his Dialogue 
 called Ion giveth high and rightly divine com- 
 mendation to Poetry. So that Plato, banishing 
 the abuse, not the thing, not banishing it, but 
 giving due honour unto it, shall be our Patron, 
 and not our adversary. For indeed I had much 
 rather (since truly I may do it) show their mistaking 
 of Plato (under whose Lion's skin they would 
 make an Ass-like braying against Poesy) than 
 go about to overthrow his authority, whom the 
 wiser a man is, the more just cause he shall find 
 to have in admiration : especially since he attribu- 
 teth unto Poesy more than myself do ; namely, 
 to be a very inspiring of a divine force far above 
 man's wit ; as in the aforenamed Dialogue is 
 apparent 29 . 
 
 28 This is Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), a cele- 
 brated critic of the Renaissance, the father of Joseph 
 Justus Scaliger (1540-1609). 
 
 29 The whole argument in the foregoing paragraph as to 
 Plato's expulsion of the poets from his ideal Republic is
 
 88 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Of the other side, who would show the honours 
 have been by the best sort of judgments granted 
 them, a whole Sea of examples would present 
 themselves. Alexanders, Caesars, Scipios, all 
 favourers of Poets. Laelius, called the Roman 
 Socrates, himself a Poet : so that part of Heau- 
 tontimorumenon in Terence was supposed to be 
 made by him. And even the Greek Socrates, 
 whom Apollo confirmed to be the only wise man, 
 is said to have spent part of his old time in putting 
 Aesop's fables into verses. And therefore, full 
 evil should it become his scholar Plato to put such 
 words in his Master's mouth against Poets. But 
 what need more ? Aristotle writes the Art of 
 Poesy : and why if it should not be written ? 
 Plutarch teacheth the use to be gathered of them, 
 and how if they should not be read ? And who 
 reads Plutarch's either history or philosophy shall 
 find he trimmeth both their garments with gards 
 of Poesy. But I list not to defend Poesy with 
 the help of her underling, Historiography. Let 
 it suffice that it is a fit soil for praise to dwell 
 upon : and what dispraise may set upon it is 
 
 absolutely correct and admirably stated. Plato's teach- 
 ing on the subject must be sought by bringing together 
 the passages in Republic, Books III and X, with the 
 treatment of cognate subjects in Gorgias, Symposium and 
 Phcedrus. In one sense Plato like Stephen Gosson 
 was writing in an age which encouraged prejudice against 
 poetry. ' The poetry of the time,' says Prof. Campbell, 
 ' appeared adapted to perpetuate those very features in 
 the lives of his countrymen which Plato earnestly sought 
 to remove ; superstition on the one hand, frivolity and 
 unlimited caprice on the other . . . The noble art of 
 tragedy had been infected with sophistry and rhetoric, 
 and had degenerated into something showy and unreal ' 
 (Plato's Republic, Murray, p. 87).
 
 An Apology for Poetry 89 
 
 either easily overcome, or transformed into just 
 commendation. So that, since the excellences of 
 it may be so easily and so justly confirmed, and 
 the low-creeping objections so soon trodden 
 down ; it not being an Art of lies, but of true 
 doctrine : not of effeminateness, but of notable 
 stirring of courage : not of abusing man's wit, 
 but of strengthening man's wit : not banished, 
 but honoured by Plato : let us rather plant more 
 Laurels for to engarland our Poets' heads (which 
 honour of being laureate as, besides them, only 
 triumphant Captains wear, is a sufficient authority 
 to show the price they ought to be had in) than 
 suffer the ill-savouring breath of such wrong- 
 speakers once to blow upon the clear springs of 
 Poesy. 
 
 But since I have run so long a career in this 
 matter, methinks, before I give my pen a full 
 stop, it shall be but a little more lost time, to 
 inquire why England (the Mother of excellent 
 minds) should be grown so hard a step-mother 
 to Poets, who certainly in wit ought to pass all 
 other : since all only proceedeth from their wit, 
 being indeed makers of themselves, not takers of 
 others. How can I but exclaim, 
 
 Musa mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso. 
 
 Sweet Poesy, that hath anciently had Kings, Em- 
 perors, Senators, great Captains, such, as besides 
 a thousand others, David, Adrian, Sophocles 
 Germanicus, not only to favour Poets, but to be 
 Poets. And, of our nearer times, can present 
 for her Patrons a Robert, King of Sicily, the great
 
 go Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 king Francis of France, King James of Scotland. 
 Such Cardinals as Bembus and Bibiena. Such 
 famous Preachers and Teachers as Beza and 
 Melancthon. So learned Philosophers as Fraca- 
 storius and Scaliger. So great Orators as Pontanus 
 and Muretus. So piercing wits as George Bu- 
 chanan 30 . So grave Counsellors, as besides many, 
 but before all, that Hospitali of France : than 
 whom (I think) that Realm never brought forth a 
 more accomplished judgment : more firmly builded 
 upon virtue. I say these, with numbers of others, 
 not only to read others' Poesies, but to poetize 
 for others' reading, that Poesy thus embraced 
 in all other places should only find in our time 
 a hard welcome in England, I think the very 
 earth lamenteth it, and therefore decketh our 
 Soil with fewer Laurels than it was accustomed. 
 For heretofore, Poets have in England also flour- 
 ished. And which is to be noted, even in those 
 times, when the trumpet of Mars did sound loudest. 
 And now that an over-faint quietness should 
 
 30 George Buchanan (1506-1582) was a famous name 
 in Sidney's day, though its then bearer is almost forgotten 
 now. He was a Scotsman, who was imprisoned at St. 
 Andrews at the instance of Cardinal Beaton for his satires 
 on the clergy, said to have been inspired by James V of 
 Scotland. He escaped to France, and was imprisoned 
 there by the Inquisition. Eventually he returned to 
 Scotland, professed the Protestant faith, and became 
 Principal of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews 1566- 
 1570. Later he lived in England as secretary to the 
 Regent Moray's commissioners, and wrote pamphlets 
 attacking the party which assassinated him. Buchanan 
 was tutor to James VI, afterwards James I of England, 
 and wrote a satire on Queen Mary of Scotland. His 
 Rerum Scoticarum Historia, 1582, was a leading author- 
 ity for Scottish history.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 91 
 
 seem to strew the house for Poets, they are almost 
 in as good reputation as the Mountebanks at 
 Venice 31 . Truly even that, as of the one side, 
 it giveth great praise to Poesy which like Venus 
 (but to better purpose), hath rather be troubled 
 in the net with Mars than enjoy the homely quiet 
 of Vulcan : so serves it for a piece of a reason, 
 why they are less grateful to idle England, which 
 now can scarce endure the pain of a pen. Upon 
 this necessarily followeth that base men with 
 servile wits undertake it : who think it enough 
 if they can be rewarded of the Printer. And so 
 as Epaminondas is said, with the honour of his 
 virtue, to have made an office, by his exercising 
 it, which before was contemptible, to become 
 highly respected : so these, no more but setting 
 their names to it, by their own disgracefulness, 
 disgrace the most graceful Poesy. For now, 
 as if all the Muses were got with child, to bring 
 forth bastard Poets, without any commission, 
 they do post over the banks of Helicon, till they 
 make the readers more weary than Post-horses : 
 while in the meantime they, 
 
 Quis meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan, 
 
 are better content to suppress the out-flowing oJ 
 their wit, than by publishing them to be accounted 
 Knights of the same order. But I, that before, 
 ever I durst aspire unto the dignity, am admitted 
 
 31 It is curious to read of this quiescence of poetry in the 
 years immediately preceding Spenser, Marlowe, Shake- 
 speare. The Shepherd's Calendar (see p. 93) had already 
 appeared.
 
 92 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 into the company of the Paper-blurrers, do find 
 the very true cause of our wanting estimation 
 is want of desert : taking upon us to be Poets, 
 in despite of Pallas. Now, wherein we want 
 desert were a thankworthy labour to express : 
 but if I knew, I should have mended myself. 
 But I, as I never desired the title, so have I neg- 
 lected the means to come by it 32 . Only over- 
 mastered by some thoughts, I yielded an inky 
 tribute unto them. Marry, they that delight in 
 Poesy itself should seek to know what they do, 
 and how they do ; and especially look themselves 
 in an unflattering Glass of reason, if they be 
 inclinable unto it. For Poesy must not be drawn 
 by the ears, it must be gently led, or rather, it 
 must lead. Which was partly the cause that made 
 the ancient -learned affirm it was a divine gift, and 
 no human skill : since all other knowledges lie 
 ready for any that hath strength of wit. A 
 Poet no industry can make, if his own Genius 
 be not carried unto it : and therefore is it an old 
 Proverb, Orator fit ; Poeta nascitur. Yet confess 
 I always that, as the fertilest ground must be 
 manured, so must the highest flying wit have a 
 Daedalus to guide him. That Daedalus, they say, 
 both in this, and in other, hath three wings, to 
 bear itself up into the air of due commendation : 
 that is, Art, Imitation, and Exercise. But these 
 neither artificial rules, nor imitative patterns, 
 we much cumber ourselves withal. Exercise 
 indeed we do, but that very fore-backwardly, 
 for where we should exercise to know, we exercise 
 
 32 Sidney objected to receive, unasked, the dedication of 
 inferior verse.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 93 
 
 as having known : and so is our brain delivered 
 of much matter, which never was begotten by 
 knowledge. For, there being two principal parts, 
 matter to be expressed by words, and words to 
 express the matter, in neither we use Art, or 
 Imitation, rightly. Our matter is Quodlibet indeed, 
 though wrongly performing Ovid's verse. 
 
 Quicquid conabar dicere versus erit : 
 
 never marshalling it into an assured rank, that 
 almost the readers cannot tell where to find 
 themselves. 
 
 Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his 
 Troilus and Cresseid ; of whom truly I know 
 not whether to marvel more, either that he in 
 that misty time could see so clearly, or that we 
 in this clear age walk so stumblingly after him. 
 Yet had he great wants, fit to be forgiven, in so 
 reverent antiquity. I account the Mirrour of 
 Magistrates meetly furnished of beautiful parts ; 
 and in the Earl of Surrey's Lyrics many things 
 tasting of a noble birth, and worthy of a noble 
 mind. The Sheapheard's Kalender hath much 
 Poetry in its Eclogues : indeed worthy the reading 
 if I be not deceived. That same framing of its 
 style to an old rustic language I dare not allow, 
 since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, 
 nor Sanazar in Italian, did affect it 33 . Besides 
 
 33 Webbe (see below) has a better sense of Spenser's 
 promise, as indicated in The Shepherd's Calendar. That 
 Sidney ' dare not allow ' the use of an old rustic language 
 because Virgil and Theocritus did not affect it is a piece 
 of criticism of no value which must in all probability be 
 ascribed to the stilted rules of the Areopagus, a little 
 club, or clique, of literary men, with the Cambridge scholar, 
 Gabriel Harvey, at its head. The influence of the Areopa-
 
 94 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 these, do I not remember to have seen but few (to 
 speak boldly) printed, that have poetical sinews 
 in them : for proof whereof, let but most of the 
 verses be put in Prose, and then ask the meaning ; 
 and it will be found that one verse did but beget 
 another, without ordering at the first what should 
 be at the last : which becomes a confused mass of 
 words, with a tingling sound of rhyme, barely, 
 accompanied with reason. 
 
 Our Tragedies and Comedies (not without cause 
 cried out against), observing rules neither of honest 
 civility nor of skilful Poetry, excepting Gorboduc 
 (again, I say, of those that I have seen), which 
 notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches 
 and well-sounding Phrases, climbing to the height 
 of Seneca's style, and as full of notable morality, 
 which it doth most delightfully teach ; and so 
 obtain the very end of Poesy : yet in troth it is 
 very defections in the circumstances ; which 
 grieveth me, because it might not remain as an 
 exact model of all Tragedies. For it is faulty 
 
 gus is also and more clearly to be traced in the succeeding 
 remarks about ' Aristotle's precept ' for the drama. 
 Sidney's insistence on the observance of the unities of 
 time and place is a piece of pedantry which could not 
 stand for a moment against the tide of dramatic genius 
 by which English literature was shortly to be invaded. 
 Shakespeare and Marlowe at the Mermaid Tavern cared 
 as little for the tragic canons of the Areopagus as Spenser 
 for the language which Virgil and Theocritus affected. 
 It must be always borne in mind that Sidney was writing 
 before however shortly before the rise of drama in his 
 own country, and that, further, the sympathies of the 
 Court to which he was attached were at that time chiefly 
 attracted by the highly-Wrought art of Lyly's Euphues 
 and of his own Arcadia, and of pageants, masques, and so 
 forth, though Queen Elizabeth later in her reign was a 
 keen patron of the stage.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 95 
 
 both in place and time, the two necessary 
 companions of all corporal actions. For where 
 the stage should always represent but one place, 
 and the uttermost time presupposed in it should 
 be, both by Aristotle's precept and common 
 reason, but one day : there is both many days, 
 and many places, inartificially imagined. But 
 if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the 
 rest ?, where you shall have Asia of the one side, 
 and Africa of the other, and so many other under- 
 kingdoms, that the Player, when he cometh in, 
 must ever begin with telling where he is : or else 
 the tale will not be conceived. Now ye shall 
 have three Ladies walk to gather flowers, and 
 then we must believe the stage to be a Garden. 
 By and by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same 
 place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not 
 for a Rock. 
 
 Upon the back of that comes out a hideous Mon- 
 ster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable 
 beholders are bound to take it for a Cave. While 
 in the meantime two Armies fly in, represented 
 with four swords and bucklers, and then what 
 hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field ? 34 
 Now, of time they are much more liberal, for 
 ordinary it is that two young Princes fall in love. 
 After many traverses, she is got with child, de- 
 livered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man, 
 falls in love, and is ready to get another child, 
 and all this in two hours' space : which how 
 absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine, and 
 
 34 The development of stage-scenery has improved 
 away this objection, but why it is more absurd to ' imagine* 
 time than action is not stated, ' Princes ' (just below) is a
 
 96 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 Art hath taught, and all ancient examples justi- 
 fied : and at this day, the ordinary Players in 
 Italy will not err in. Yet will some bring in an 
 example of Eunuchus in Terence that containeth 
 matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years. 
 True it is, and so was it to be played in two days, 
 and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though 
 Plautus hath in one place done amiss, let us hit 
 with him, and not miss with him. But they 
 will say, how then shall we set forth a story which 
 containeth both many places, and many times ? 
 And do they not know that a Tragedy is tied to 
 the laws of Poetry, and not of History ?, not bound 
 to follow the story, but having liberty, either to 
 feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history 
 to the most tragical conveniency. Again, many 
 things may be told, which cannot be shown, if they 
 know the difference betwixt reporting and repre- 
 senting. As for example, I may speak (though I 
 am here) of Peru, and, in speech, digress from 
 that to the description of Calicut : but in action 
 I cannot represent it without Pacolet's horse : 
 and so was the manner the Ancients took, by 
 some Nuncius, to recount things done in former 
 time, or other place. Lastly, if they will represent 
 an history, they must not (as Horace saith) begin 
 Ab ovo : but they must come to the principal 
 point of that one action which they will represent. 
 By example this will be best expressed. I have 
 a story of young Polydorus, delivered for safety's 
 sake, with great riches, by his Father Priam to 
 Polymnestor, King of Thrace, in the Trojan war- 
 generic plural .--- prince and princess.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 97 
 
 time. He after some years, hearing the over- 
 throw of Priam, for to make the tre asure his own, 
 murdereth the child : the body of the child is 
 taken up to Hecuba ; she the same day findeth a 
 slight to be revenged most cruelly of the Tyrant. 
 Where now would one of our Tragedy writers 
 begin, but with the delivery of the child ? Then 
 should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I 
 know not how many years, and travel numbers 
 of places. But where doth Euripides ? Even 
 with the finding of the body, leaving the rest to be 
 told by the spirit of Polydoras. This need no 
 further to be enlarged, the dullest wit may con- 
 ceive it. But besides these gross absurdities, 
 how all their Plays be neither right Tragedies, nor 
 right Comedies : mingling Kings and Clowns, 
 not because the matter so carrieth it : but thrust 
 in Clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part 
 in majestical matters, with neither decency nor 
 discretion 35 . So as neither the admiration and 
 commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by 
 their mongrel Tragi-comedy obtained. I know 
 Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing 
 recounted with space of time, not represented in 
 one moment : and I know the Ancients have one 
 or two examples of Tragi-comedies, as Plautus 
 hath Amphitrio. But if we mark them well, we 
 shall find that they never, or very daintily, match 
 Horn-pipes and Funerals. So falleth it out that, 
 having indeed no right Comedy, in that comical 
 
 35 This problem of ' decency ' was settled once for all 
 by the practice of Shakespeare, who mingles the tragic 
 and comic elements in his plays the kings and clowns 
 without respect to these theories of the stage. 
 E.L. G
 
 98 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 part of our Tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, 
 unworthy of any chaste ears : or some extreme show 
 of doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, 
 and nothing else : where the whole tract of a 
 Comedy should be full of delight, as the Tragedy 
 should be still maintained, in a well-raised admira- 
 tion. But our Comedians think there is no delight 
 without laughter, which is very wrong, for though 
 laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it 
 not of delight : as though delight should be the 
 cause of laughter, but well may one thing breed 
 both together : nay, rather in themselves they 
 have, as it were, a kind of contrariety : for delight 
 we scarcely do, but in things that have a con- 
 veniency to ourselves, or to the general nature : 
 laughter almost ever cometh of things most 
 disproportioned to ourselves, and nature. Delight 
 hath a joy in it, either permanent, or present. 
 Laughter hath only a scornful tickling. 
 
 For example, we are ravished with delight to 
 see a fair woman, and yet are far from being 
 moved to laughter. We laugh at deformed 
 creatures, wherein certainly we cannot delight. 
 We delight in good chances, we laugh at mis- 
 chances ; we delight to hear the happiness of our 
 friends, or Country ; at which he were worthy to 
 be laughed at, that would laugh ; we shall con- 
 trarily laugh sometimes, to find a matter quite 
 mistaken, and go down the hill against the bias, 
 in the mouth of some such men, as for the respect 
 of them, one shall be heartily sorry, yet he cannot 
 choose but laugh ; and so is rather pained than 
 delighted with laughter. Yet deny I not, but that 
 they may go well together, for as in Alexander's
 
 An Apology for Poetry 99 
 
 picture well set out, we delight without laughter, 
 and in twenty mad Antics we laugh without 
 delight : so in Hercules, painted with his great 
 beard, and furious countenance, in woman's 
 attire, spinning at Omphale's commandment, it 
 breedeth both delight and laughter. For the 
 representing of so strange a power in love pro- 
 cureth delight : and the scornfulness of the action 
 stirreth laughter. But I speak to this purpose, 
 that all the end of the comical part be not upon 
 such scornful matters, as stirreth laughter only : 
 but mixed with it, that delightful teaching which 
 is the end of Poesy. And the great fault even 
 in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly 
 by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful 
 things ; which are rather execrable than ridiculous : 
 or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than 
 scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a 
 wretched Beggar, or a beggarly Clown ?, or against 
 law of hospitality, to jest at strangers, because 
 they speak not English so well as we do?; what 
 do we learn, since it is certain 
 
 Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se 
 Quam quod ridicules homines facit. 
 
 But rather a busy loving Courtier, a heartless 
 threatening Thraso. A self-wise-seeming school- 
 master. An awry-transformed Traveller. These 
 if we saw walk in stage names, which we play 
 naturally, therein were delightful laughter, and 
 teaching delightfulness : as in the other, the 
 Tragedies of Buchanan, do justly bring forth a 
 divine admiration. But I have lavished out too 
 many words of this play matter. I do it because
 
 TOO Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 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 unresistable 
 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 bewrayed by that same 
 forcibleness, or Energia (as the Greeks call it) of 
 the writer. But let this be a sufficient, though short 
 note, that we miss the right use of the material 
 point of Poesy. 
 
 Now, for the outside of it, which is words, or 
 (as I may term it) Diction 30 , it is even well worse. 
 
 3 Readers of Lyly and his imitators (who include
 
 An Apology for Poetry 101 
 
 So is that honey-flowing Matron Eloquence 
 apparelled, or rather disguised, in a Courtesan- 
 like painted affectation : one time with so far-set 
 words, they may seem Monsters : but must seem 
 strangers to any poor English man : another time, 
 with coursing of a Letter, as if they were bound 
 to follow the method of a Dictionary : another 
 time, with figures and flowers, extremely winter- 
 starved. But I would this fault were only peculiar 
 to Versifiers, and had not as large possession among 
 Prose-printers ; and (which is to be marvelled) 
 among many Scholars ; and (which is to be pitied) 
 among some Preachers. Truly I could wish, if at 
 least I might be so bold to wish in a thing beyond 
 the reach of my capacity, the diligent imitators of 
 Tully and Demosthenes (most worthy to be 
 imitated) did not so much keep Nizolian Paper- 
 
 Shakespeare in some early plays) need not be reminded 
 that the works of prose-style selected for censure in these 
 paragraphs belong to the literary movement known as 
 Euphuism. The best contribution of the Euphuists to 
 English prose is their sentence-building and paragraph- 
 construction, which introduced the ideas of law and order 
 into the wearisome and interminable periods in which 
 older writers were wont to lose their drift. But Lyly, 
 whose style of composition in Euphues was based primarily 
 on the Spanish example of Guevara's Dial of Princes 
 and secondarily on the Latin works of Cicero and Seneca, 
 committed all the faults which Sidney stigmatizes here. 
 The ' far-set ' or far-fetched words ; the ' coursing of a 
 letter ' or ' letter-hunting ', which was the appropriate 
 description of alliteration affected to excess : the similes 
 laboriously introduced from Pliny and other natural 
 historians (' all herbalists, all stories of beasts . . . are 
 rifled up ') these are all early and familiar characteristics 
 of the movement known as Euphuism, to which our 
 modulated prose, through Addison, Burke, and Macaulay, 
 owes so much of its dignity and ornateness.
 
 IO2 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 books 37 of their figures and phrases, as by atten- 
 tive translation (as it were) devour them whole, and 
 make them wholly theirs. For now they cast 
 Sugar and Spice upon every dish that is served to 
 the table ; like those Indians, not content to wear 
 ear-rings at the fit and natural place of the ears, 
 but they will thrust Jewels through their nose and 
 lips because they will be sure to be fine. 
 
 Tully, when he was to drive out Catiline, as it 
 were with a Thunder-bolt of eloquence, often used 
 that figure of repetition, Vivit vivit ? into Senatum 
 venit etc. Indeed, inflamed with a well-grounded 
 rage, he would have his words (as it were) double 
 out of his mouth : and so do that artificially which 
 we see men do in choler naturally. And we, 
 having noted the grace of those words, hale them 
 in sometime to a familiar Epistle, when it were to 
 too much choler to be choleric. Now for simili- 
 tudes, in certain printed discourses, I think all 
 Herbalists, all stories of Beasts, Fowls, and Fishes, 
 are rifled up, that they come in multitudes, to 
 wait upon any of our conceits ; which certainly 
 is as absurd a surfeit to the ears as is possible : 
 for the force of a similitude not being to prove any- 
 thing to a contrary Disputer, but only to explain 
 to a willing hearer, when that is done, the rest is a 
 most tedious prattling : rather over-swaying the 
 memory from the purpose whereto they were 
 applied than any whit informing the judgment, 
 already either satisfied, or by similitudes not to be 
 
 37 Marius Nizolius, an Italian grammarian of the i6th 
 century Renaissance, was the compiler of a Thesaurus 
 Ciceronianus, and gave his name to commonplace books 
 of quotable or notable passages.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 103 
 
 satisfied. For my part, I do not doubt, when 
 Antonius and Crassus, the great forefathers of 
 Cicero in eloquence, the one (as Cicero testifieth of 
 them) pretended not to know Art, the other not 
 to set by it : because, with a plain sensibleness, 
 they might win credit of popular ears ; which 
 credit is the nearest step to persuasion : which 
 persuasion is the chief mark of Oratory ; I do not 
 doubt (I say) but that they used these tracks very 
 sparingly, which who doth generally use, any many 
 may see doth dance to his own music : and so be 
 noted by the audience, more careful to speak 
 curiously than to speak truly. 
 
 Undoubtedly (at least to my opinion undoubt- 
 edly), I have found in divers smally learned 
 Courtiers a more sound style than hi some pro- 
 fessors of learning : of which I can guess no other 
 cause, but that the Courtier following that which 
 by practice he findeth fittest to nature, therein 
 (though he know it not) doth according to Art, 
 though not by Art : where the other, using Art to 
 show Art, and not to hide Art (as in these cases he 
 should do) flyeth from nature, and indeed abuseth 
 Art 38 . 
 
 But what ? : methinks I deserve to be pounded, 
 for straying from Poetry to Oratory : but both 
 have such an affinity in this wordish consideration 
 that I think this digression will make my meaning 
 receive the fuller understanding : which is not to 
 take upon me to teach Poets how they should do, 
 but only finding myself sick among the rest, to 
 show some one or two spots of the common infec- 
 
 38 Note the clearness and soundness of this application 
 of the principle of aesthetics, ars est celare artem.
 
 104 Si* Philip Sidney 
 
 tion grown among the most part of writers : that 
 acknowledging ourselves somewhat awry, we may 
 bend to the right use both of matter and manner ; 
 whereto our language giveth us great occasion, 
 being indeed capable of any excellent exercising 
 of it. I know some will say it is a mingled lan- 
 guage. And why not so much the better, taking 
 the best of both the other ? Another will say it 
 wanteth Grammar. Nay truly, it hath that 
 praise, that it wanteth not Grammar : for Gram- 
 mar it might have, but it needs it not ; being so 
 easy of itself, and so void of those cumbersome 
 differences of Cases, Genders, Moods and Tenses, 
 which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babi- 
 lon's 39 curse, that a man should be put to school 
 to learn his mother-tongue. But for the uttering 
 sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind, 
 which is the end of speech, that hath it equally 
 with any other tongue in the world : and is par- 
 ticularly happy in compositions of two or three 
 words together 40 , near the Greek, far beyond the 
 Latin : which is one of the greatest beauties can 
 be in a language. 
 
 Now, of versifying there are two sorts, the one 
 Ancient, the other Modern : the Ancient marked 
 the quantity of each syllable, and, according to 
 that, framed his verse : the Modern, observing only 
 number (with some regard of the accent), the chief 
 life of it standeth in that like sounding of the words 
 which we call Rhyme. Whether of these be the 
 most excellent would bear many speeches. The 
 
 3 Babilon, i.e. Babel. 
 
 40 That is, compound words.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 105 
 
 Ancient (no doubt) more fit for Music, both words 
 and tune observing quantity, and more fit lively to 
 express divers passions, by the low and lofty 
 Sound of the well-weighed syllable. The latter 
 likewise, with its Rhyme, striketh a certain music 
 to the ear : and in fine, since it doth delight, though 
 by another way, it obtains the same purpose : 
 there being in either sweetness, and wanting in 
 neither majesty. Truly the English, before any 
 other 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 its 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. 
 
 Now for the rhyme, though we do not observe 
 quantity, yet we observe the accent very precisely : 
 which other languages either cannot do, or will not 
 do so absolutely. That Caesura, or breathing-place 
 in the midst of the verse, neither Italian nor 
 Spanish have, the French, and we, never almost 
 fail of. Lastly, even the very rhyme itself, the 
 Italian cannot put in the last syllable, by the 
 French named the Masculine rhyme, but still in 
 the next to the last, which the French call the 
 Female ; or the next before that, which the 
 Italians term Sdrucciola. The example of the 
 former is Buono, Suono, of the Sdrucciola, Femina, 
 Semina. The French, of the other side, hath
 
 io6 Sir Philip Sidney 
 
 both the Male, as Bon, Son, and the Female, as 
 Plaise, Taise. But the Sdrucciola he hath not : 
 where the English hath all three, as Due, True, 
 Father, Rather, Motion, Potion 41 ; with much more 
 which might be said, but that I find already the 
 triflingness of this discourse is much too much 
 enlarged. So that since the ever-praise-worthy 
 Poesy is full of virtue-breeding delightfulness, and 
 void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name 
 of learning : since the blames laid against it are 
 either false, or feeble : since the cause why it is not 
 esteemed in England is the fault of Poet-apes, not 
 Poets : since lastly, our tongue is most fit to 
 honour , Poesy, and to be honoured by Poesy, I 
 conjure you all that have had the evil luck to 
 read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name 
 of the nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred 
 mysteries of Poesy : no more to laugh at the name 
 of Poets, as though they were next inheritors to 
 Fools : no more to jest at the reverent title of a 
 Rhymer : but to believe with Aristotle that they 
 were the ancient Treasurers of the Grecians' 
 Divinity. To believe with Bembus that they 
 were first bringers in of all civility. To believe 
 with Scaliger that no Philosopher's precepts can 
 sooner make you an honest man than the reading 
 of Virgil. To believe with Clauserus, the Trans- 
 lator of Cornutus, that it pleased the heavenly 
 Deity, by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of 
 fables, to give us all knowledge, Logic, Rhetoric, 
 Philosophy, natural and moral ; and Quid non ? 
 To believe with me, that there are many mysteries 
 
 41 The ion words were trisyllabic, as frequently in 
 Shakespeare.
 
 An Apology for Poetry 107 
 
 contained in Poetry which of purpose were written 
 darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused. 
 To believe with Landin that they are so beloved 
 of the Gods that whatsoever they write, proceeds 
 of a divine fury. Lastly, to believe themselves, 
 when they tell you they will make you immortal 
 by their verses. 
 
 Thus doing, your name shall flourish in the 
 Printers' shops ; thus doing, you shall be of kin 
 to many a poetical Preface ; thus doing, you shall 
 be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all, you 
 shall dwell upon Superlatives. Thus doing, though 
 you be Libertino patre natus, you shall suddenly 
 grow Hercules proles : 
 
 Si quid mea carmina possunt. 
 
 Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's 
 Beatrix, or Virgil's Anchises. But if (fie of such a 
 but !) you be borne so near the dull-making 
 Cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the 
 Planet-like Music of Poetry, if you have so earth- 
 creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look 
 to the sky of Poetry : or rather, by a certain 
 rustical disdain, will become such a Home as to 
 be a Momus of Poetry : then, though I will not 
 wish unto you 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 lacking skill of a Sonnet : and when 
 you die, your memory die from the earth, for want 
 of an Epitaph.
 
 GEORGE PUTTENHAM 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 1 
 OF LANGUAGE 
 
 SPEECH is not natural to man saving for his only 
 hability to speak, and that he is by kind apt to 
 utter all his conceits with sounds and voices 
 diversified many manner of ways, by means of the 
 many and fit instruments he hath by nature to 
 that purpose, as a broad and voluble tongue, 
 thin and movable lips, teeth even and not shagged, 
 thick ranged, a round vaulted palate, and a long 
 throat, besides an excellent capacity of wit that 
 maketh him more disciplinable and imitative than 
 any other creature 2 . Then as to the form and 
 
 1 This chapter forms Ch. IV of Book III (' Of Orna- 
 ment') in The Art of English Poesy. I have brought it 
 up to this place and have entitled it ' Introductory 
 Chapter ', because the writer's remarks on language seem 
 appropriately to open his treatment ' of poets and poesy '. 
 It was with this chapter in mind that Prof. Arber described 
 Puttenham as ' the Archbishop Trench of his age '. 
 
 2 Note how Puttenham in this exordium goes straight 
 back to the physical conditions of speech. The English 
 Board of Education, in their Suggestions for the Considera- 
 tion of Teachers (Cd. 2638, 1905), similarly state that 
 ' experience has shown that it is best to begin by calling 
 attention to the sounds that are produced by the visible 
 organs of speech '. 
 
 lOa
 
 no George Puttenham 
 
 action of his speech, it cometh to him by art and 
 teaching, and by use or exercise. 
 
 But after a speech is fully fashioned to the 
 common understanding, and accepted by consent 
 of a whole country and nation, it is called a lan- 
 guage, and receiveth none allowed alteration but 
 by extraordinary occasions by little and little, as 
 it were insensibly bringing in of many corruptions 
 that creep along with the time 3 ; of all which 
 matters, we have more largely spoken in our books 
 of the originals and pedigree of the English tongue 4 . 
 Then when I say language, I mean the speech 
 wherein the Poet or maker writeth, be it Greek or 
 Latin, or as our case is the vulgar English, and 
 when it is peculiar unto a country it is called the 
 mother-speech of that people. The Greeks term 
 it Idioma : so is ours at this day the Norman- 
 English. Before the Conquest of the Normans it 
 was the Anglo-saxon, and before that the British, 
 which as some will is at this day the Welsh, or as 
 others affirm the Cornish : I for my part think 
 neither of both, as they be now spoken and pro- 
 nounced. 
 
 This part in our maker or Poet must be heedily 
 looked unto, that it be natural, pure, and the most 
 
 3 Cf. Trench, On the Study of Words, V, (Routledge), 
 and Bradley, The Making of English, Chs. Ill and IV, 
 (Macmillan). 
 
 4 This work on ' the originals and pedigree of the 
 English tongue ' is not extant, nor have we any trace 
 of other books by the author of the present treatise to 
 which he refers, such as Hierotechni, De Decoro, comedies, 
 interludes, and hymns. The literary activity of the 
 writer of The Art of English Poesy makes the difficulty 
 of identifying him more remarkable.
 
 Of Language in 
 
 usual of all his country : and for the same purpose 
 rather that which is spoken in the king's Court, 
 or in the good towns and cities within the land, 
 than in the marches and frontiers, or in port- 
 towns, where strangers haunt for traffic's sake, or 
 yet in Universities where scholars use much 
 peevish affectation of words out of the primitive 
 languages 5 , or finally, in any uplandish village or 
 corner of a Realm, where is no resort but of poor 
 rustical or uncivil people. Neither shall he follow 
 the speech of a craftsman or carter, or other of the 
 inferior sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in 
 the best town and city in this Realm, for such 
 persons do abuse good speeches by strange accents 
 or ill-shapen sounds, and false orthography. But 
 he shall follow generally the better brought up 
 sort, such as the Greeks call chatientes, men civil 
 and graciously behavoured and bred. 
 
 Our maker therefore at these days shall not 
 follow Piers Plowman nor Gower nor Lydgate nor 
 yet Chaucer, for their language is now out of use 
 with us ; neither shall he take the terms of North- 
 ern-men, such as they use in daily talk, whether 
 they be noble men or gentlemen, or of their best 
 clerks all is a matter ; nor in effect any speech 
 used beyond the river of Trent, though no man 
 can deny but that theirs is the purer English 
 Saxon at this day, yet it is not so Courtly nor so 
 current as our Southern English is, no more is the 
 far Western man's speech. Ye shall therefore take 
 
 6 Puttenham was probably thinking of the Cambridge 
 clique, ' The Areopagus ', headed by Gabriel Harvey 
 (1545-1630), the tone of which was certainly donnish and 
 indeed not seldom ' peevish '.
 
 112 George PuUenham 
 
 the usual speech of the Court, and that of London 
 and the shires lying about London within sixty 
 miles, and not much above 6 . 
 
 I say not this but that in every shire of England 
 there be gentlemen and others that speak but 
 specially write as good Southern as we of Middlesex 
 or Surrey do, but not the common people of every 
 shire, to whom the gentlemen and also their learned 
 clerks do for the most part condescend, but 
 herein we are already ruled by the English 
 Dictionaries and other books written by learned 
 men, and therefore it needeth none other direction 
 in that behalf. Albeit peradventure some small 
 admonition be not impertinent, for we find in our 
 English writers many words and speeches amend- 
 able, and ye shall see in some many inkhorn terms 
 so ill affected brought in by men of learning as 
 preachers and schoolmasters : and many strange 
 terms of other languages by Secretaries and Mer- 
 chants and travellers, and many dark words and 
 not usual nor well-sounding, though they be daily 
 spoken in Court. Wherefore great heed must be 
 taken by our maker in this point that his choice be 
 good. 
 
 The literary geography of this paragraph is particu- 
 larly valuable. The sixty-mile radius has social import- 
 ance, derived from the conditions of Elizabethan England, 
 and reference may here be made to the Memoirs of Robert 
 Gary, Earl of Monmouth, who was Warden of the Marches 
 during the last ten years of the Queen's reign (' King's 
 Classics,' Moring). It need hardly be added that the 
 literary value, e.g., of Tennyson's dialect-poems, or of 
 the ' Kailyard ' novelists, or of the Barrack Room Ballads, 
 or of the East London school of fiction, is founded on the 
 continuance of Puttenham's principle, though extended 
 beyond his home-counties.
 
 Of Language 113 
 
 And peradventure the writer hereof be in that 
 behalf no less faulty than any other, using many 
 strange and unaccustomed words and borrowed 
 from other languages ; and in that respect him- 
 self no meet Magistrate to reform the same errors 
 in any other person. But since he is not unwilling 
 to acknowledge his own fault, and can the better 
 tell how to amend it, he may seem a more excusable 
 corrector of other men's : he intendeth therefore 
 for an indifferent way and universal benefit to 
 tax himself first and before any others. 
 
 These be words used by the author in this present 
 treatise : (i.) scientific, but with some reason, for it 
 answereth the word mechanical, which no other 
 word could have done so properly, for when he 
 spake of all artificers which rest either in science 
 or in handy-craft, it followed necessarily that 
 scientific should be coupled with mechanical, or 
 else neither of both to have been allowed, but in 
 their places ; a man of science liberal and a handi- 
 craftsman, which had not been so cleanly a speech 
 as the other, (ii.) Major-domo : in truth this word 
 is borrowed of the Spaniard and Italian, and 
 therefore new and not usual, but to them that are 
 acquainted with the affairs of Court ; and so for 
 his jolly magnificence (as this case is) may be 
 accepted among Courtiers, for whom this is 
 specially written. A man might have said in- 
 stead of Major-domo the French word (maistre 
 d'hostell) but illfavouredly, or the right English 
 word (Lord Steward.) But methinks for my own 
 opinion this word Major-domo, though it be 
 borrowed, is more acceptable than any of the rest ; 
 other men may judge otherwise, (iii.) Politician^ 
 EX, H
 
 H4 George Puttenham 
 
 this word also is received from the Frenchmen, but 
 at this day usual in Court and with all good Secre- 
 taries, and cannot find an English word to match 
 it, for to have said a man politique had not been 
 so well : because in truth that had been no more 
 than to have said a civil person. Politician is 
 rather a surveyor of civility than civil, and a 
 public minister or Counsellor in the state. Ye 
 have also this word (iv.) Conduct, a French word, but 
 well allowed of us, and long since usual ; it sounds 
 somewhat more than this word (leading) for it is 
 applied only to the leading of a Captain, and not 
 as a little boy should lead a blind man, therefore 
 more proper to the case when he said conduct of 
 whole armies 7 . Ye find also this word (v.) Idiom, 
 taken from the Greeks, yet serving aptly when 
 a man wanteth to express so much unless it be in 
 two words, which surplusage to avoid we are 
 allowed to draw in other words single, and as 
 much significative. This word (vi.) significative 
 is borrowed of the Latin and French, but to us 
 brought in first by some Noble-man's Secretary, 
 as I think, yet doth so well serve the turn as it 
 could not now be spared. And many more like 
 usurped Latin and French words : as, Method, 
 methodical, placation, function, assubtiling, refining, 
 compendious, prolix, figurative, inveigle. A term 
 borrowed of our common Lawyers, impression, 
 also a new term, but well expressing the matter, 
 and more than our English word. These words, 
 Numerous, numerosity, metrical, harmonical, but 
 they cannot be refused, specially in this place for 
 
 7 On synonymous, or, rather, alternative words, see 
 Trench, op. cit., VI, 'On the Distinction of Words '.
 
 Of Language 115 
 
 description of the art. Also ye find these words, 
 'penetrate, penetrable, indignity, which I cannot see 
 how we may spare them, whatsoever fault we 
 find with Ink-horn terms : for our speech wanteth 
 words to such sense so well to be used. Yet in- 
 stead of indignity ye have unworthiness ; and for 
 penetrate we may say pierce, and that a French 
 term also, or broach or enter into with violence, 
 but not so well sounding as penetrate. Itenij 
 savage, for wild : obscure, for dark. Item, these 
 words, declination, delineation, dimension, are 
 scholastical terms indeed, and yet very proper. 
 But peradventure (and I could bring a reason for 
 it) many other like words borrowed out of the 
 Latin and French were not so well to be allowed 
 by us as these words, audacious, for bold : facun- 
 dity, for eloquence : egregious, for great or notable : 
 implete, for replenished : attemptat, for attempt : 
 compatible, for agreeable in nature, and many 
 more. But herein the noble Poet Horace hath 
 said enough to satisfy us all in these few verses : 
 
 Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere cadentque 
 Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus 
 Quern penes arbitrium est et vis et norma loquendi. 8 
 
 Which I have thus englished, but nothing with so 
 good grace, nor so briefly as the Poet wrote : 
 
 Many a word yfal'n shall eft arise 
 And such as now been held in highest prise 
 Will fall as fast, when use and custom will 
 Only umpires of speech, for force and skill. 
 
 8 Ars Poetica, 70-72.
 
 OF POETS AND POESY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT A POET AND POESY IS, AND WHO MAY BE 
 WORTHILY SAID THE MOST EXCELLENT POET OF 
 OUR TIME. 
 
 A POET is as much to say as a maker. And our 
 English name well conforms with the Greek word : 
 for of TToieiv to make they call a maker Poeta. 
 Such as (by way of resemblance and reverently) 
 we may say of God who, without any travail to 
 his divine imagination, made all the world of 
 nought, nor also by any pattern or mould as the 
 Platonics with their Ideas do phantastically sup- 
 pose. Even so the very Poet makes and contrives 
 out of his own brain both the verse and matter of 
 his poem, and not by any foreign copy or example, 
 as doth the translator, who therefore may well be 
 said a versifier, but not a Poet. 
 
 The premises 1 considered, it giveth to the 
 name and profession no small dignity and pre- 
 eminence above all other artificers, scientific 2 or 
 
 1 The ' premises ' are conventional. Sidney and 
 Webbe start with the same reference to the Greek ' maker '. 
 
 2 For the writer's defence of this term, and of others 
 used in these early chapters, see p. 113 supra.
 
 n8 George Puttenham 
 
 mechanical. And nevertheless, without any re- 
 pugnancy at all, a Poet may in some sort be said 
 a follower or imitator, because he can express 
 the true and lively of everything which is set 
 before him, and which he taketh in hand to de- 
 scribe : and so in that respect is both a maker 
 and a counterfeiter : and Poesy an art not only 
 of making, but also of imitation. And this 
 science in its perfection cannot grow but by 
 some divine instinct : the Platonics call it furor ; 
 or by excellence of nature and complexion ; or 
 by great subtlety of the spirits and wit ; or by 
 much experience and observation of the world, 
 and course of kind, or peradventure by all or 
 most part of them. Otherwise how was it possible 
 that Homer, being but a poor private man, and, 
 as some say, in his later age blind, should so 
 exactly set forth and describe, as if he had been 
 a most excellent Captain or General, the order 
 and array of battles, the conduct of whole armies, 
 the sieges and assaults of cities and towns?; or, 
 as some great Prince's major-domo and perfect 
 Surveyor in Court, the order, sumptuousness and 
 magnificence of royal banquets, feasts, weddings, 
 and interviews ? ; or, as a Politician very prudent 
 and much inured with the private and public 
 affairs, so gravely examine the laws and ordinances 
 civil, or so profoundly discourse in matters of 
 estate and forms of all politic regiment ? Finally, 
 how could he so naturally point out the speeches, 
 countenance and manners of princely persons 
 and private, to wit, the wrath of Achilles, the 
 magnanimity of Agamemnon, the prudence of 
 Menelaus, the prowess of Hector, the majesty
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 119 
 
 of king Priamus, the gravity of Nestor, the policies 
 and eloquence of Ulysses, the calamities of the 
 distressed Queens, and valiance of all the Captains 
 and adventurous knights in those lamentable 
 wars of Troy ? 
 
 It is therefore of Poets thus to be conceived, 
 that if they be able to devise and make all these 
 things of themselves, without any subject of verity, 
 that they be (by manner of speech) as creating 
 gods. If they do it by instinct divine or natural 
 then surely much favoured from above. If by 
 their experience, then no doubt very wise men. 
 If by any precedent or pattern laid before them, 
 then truly the most excellent imitators and counter- 
 feiters of all others. 
 
 But you, Madame 3 my most Honoured and 
 Gracious, if I should seem to offer you this my 
 device for a discipline and not a delight, I might 
 well be reputed, of all others the most arrogant 
 and injurious ; yourself being already, of any 
 that I know in our time, the most excellent Poet. 
 Forsooth, by your Princely purse, favours, and 
 countenance, making in manner what ye list, 
 the poor man rich, the lewd 4 well-learned, the 
 
 3 Puttenham was writing for Queen Elizabeth, and 
 the'popular style of his treatise is mainly due to the fact 
 that it was addressed to the instruction of ladies. The 
 excessive adulation of the Queen as a poet, which occurs 
 here and in Chapter XXXI below, is a sin of the times not 
 in the least affecting the value of the rest of the criticism. 
 
 * Lewd= ignorant (from lay = not clerical) ; see Trench 
 op. cit, p. 9, and cf. (among countless other examples) 
 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales : 
 
 For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, 
 No wonder is a lewed man to ruste. 
 
 Prologue, 501-2.
 
 120 George Puttenham 
 
 coward courageous, and vile both noble and 
 valiant. Then for imitation no less, your person 
 as a most cunning counterfeiter lively representing 
 Venus in countenance, in life Diana, Pallas for 
 government, and Juno in all honour and regal 
 magnificence. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THAT THERE MAY BE AN ART OF OUR ENGLISH POESY, 
 AS WELL AS THERE IS OF THE LATIN AND GREEK. 
 
 THEN as there was no art in the world till by 
 experience found out, so if Poesy be now an Art, 
 and of all antiquity hath been among the Greeks 
 and Latins, and yet were none, until by studious 
 persons fashioned and reduced into a method of 
 rules and precepts, then no doubt may there be 
 the like with us. And if the art of Poesy be but a 
 skill appertaining to utterance, why may not the 
 same be with us as well as with them, our language 
 being no less copious, pithy, and significant than 
 theirs, our conceits the same, and our wits no 
 less apt to devise and imitate than theirs were ? 
 If again Art be but a certain order of rules pre- 
 scribed by reason and gathered by experience, 
 why should not Poesy be a vulgar Art with us 
 as well as with the Greeks and Latins, our language 
 admitting no fewer rules and nice diversities 
 than theirs, but peradventure more, by a peculiar 
 which our speech hath in many things differing 
 from theirs?, and yet, in the general points of
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 121 
 
 that Art, allowed to go in common with them : 
 so that, if one point perchance is their feet, 
 whereupon their measures stand, and which 
 indeed is all the beauty of their Poesy, and which 
 feet we have not, nor as yet never went about 
 to frame (the nature of our language and words 
 not permitting it), we have instead thereof twenty 
 other curious points in that skill more than they 
 ever had, by reason of our rhyme and tunable 
 concords or symphony, which they never observed. 
 Poesy therefore may be an Art in our vulgar, 
 and that very methodical and commendable. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HOW POETS WERE THE FIRST PRIESTS, THE FIRST 
 PROPHETS, THE FIRST LEGISLATORS AND POLI- 
 TICIANS IN THE WORLD. 
 
 THE profession and use of Poesy is most ancient 
 from the beginning, and not, as many erroneously 
 suppose, after but before any civil society was 
 among men. For it is written that Poesy was 
 the original cause and occasion of their first 
 assemblies, when before the people remained in 
 the woods and mountains, vagrant and dispersed 
 like the wild beasts, lawless and naked, or very 
 ill-clad, and of all good and necessary provision 
 for harbour or sustenance utterly unfurnished, 
 so as they little differed for their manner of life 
 from the very brute beasts of the field. 
 
 Whereupon it is feigned that Amphion and
 
 122 George Puttenham 
 
 Orpheus, two Poets of the first ages, one of them, 
 to wit Amphion, builded up cities, and reared 
 walls with the stones that came in heaps to the 
 sound of his harp, figuring thereby the mollifying 
 of hard and stony hearts by his sweet and eloquent 
 persuasion. And Orpheus assembled the wild 
 beasts to come in herds to hearken to his music, 
 and by that means made them tame, implying 
 thereby, how by his discreet and wholesome lessons, 
 uttered in harmony and with melodious instru- 
 ments, he brought the rude and savage people to 
 a more civil and orderly life, nothing, as it seemeth, 
 more prevailing or fit to redress and edify the 
 cruel and sturdy courage of man than it. And 
 as these two Poets and Linus before them, and 
 Musseus also and Hesiod in Greece and Arcadia 
 so by all likelihood had more Poets done in other 
 places, and in other ages before them, though there 
 be no remembrance left of them, by reason of the 
 records by some accident of time perished and 
 failing. 
 
 Poets therefore are of great antiquity 5 . Then 
 forasmuch as they were the first that intended 
 
 5 There is considerable learning in this chapter and the 
 next, and evidence of wide reading, though the conclusions 
 are stated in a popular form. The rise of sententious 
 poetry followed very closely the lines indicated here, 
 but the poet-function was secondary to the priest-function, 
 and the rude rhythm of the oracles was merely a mnemonic 
 convenience. ' How Poets were the first Priests, etc., 
 in the world ' is a misleading chapter-heading, which begs 
 the question of the antiquity of poetry as such. It 
 should rather read ' How Priests, etc., were the earliest 
 Poets '. But Puttenham's special plea is sufficiently 
 accurate for his purpose, which was to vindicate the 
 dignity of poetry.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 123 
 
 to the observation of nature and her works, and 
 specially of the celestial courses, by reason of the 
 continual motion of the heavens, searching after 
 the first mover, and from thence by degrees 
 coming to know and consider of the substances 
 separate and abstract, which we call the divine 
 intelligences or good Angels (Demons), they were 
 the first that instituted sacrifices of placation, 
 with invocations and worship to them, as to Gods ; 
 and invented and established all the rest of the 
 observances and ceremonies of religion, and so 
 were the first Priests and ministers of the holy 
 mysteries. 
 
 And because for the better execution of that 
 high charge and function it behoved them to 
 live chaste and in all holiness of life, and in continual 
 study and contemplation, they came by instinct 
 divine and by deep meditation and much ab- 
 stinence (the same assubtiling and refining their 
 spirits) to be made apt to receive visions, both 
 waking and sleeping, which made them utter 
 prophecies, and foretell things to come. So also 
 were they the first Prophets or seers, Videntes, 
 for so the Scripture termeth them in Latin after 
 the Hebrew word, and all the oracles and answers 
 of the gods were given in metre or verse, and 
 published to the people by their direction. And 
 for that they were aged and grave men, and of 
 much wisdom and experience in the affairs of the 
 world, they were the first lawmakers to the people, 
 and the first politicians, devising all expedient 
 means for the establishment of commonwealth, 
 to hold and contain the people in order and duty 
 by force and virtue of good and wholesome laws,
 
 124 George Puttenham 
 
 made for the preservation of the public peace and 
 tranquillity. The same peradventure not pur- 
 posely intended, but greatly furthered by the 
 awe of their gods, and such scruple of conscience 
 as the terrors of their late invented religion had 
 led them into. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW POETS WERE THE FIRST PHILOSOPHERS, THE 
 FIRST ASTRONOMERS AND HISTORIOGRAPHERS 
 AND ORATORS AND MUSICIANS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 UTTERANCE also and language is given by nature 
 to man for persuasion of others, and aid of them- 
 selves I mean the first ability to speak. For 
 speech itself is artificial and made by man, and the 
 more pleasing it is the more it prevaileth to such 
 purpose as it is intended for. But speech by 
 metre is a kind of utterance more cleanly couched 
 and more delicate to the ear than prose is, because 
 it is more current and slipper upon the tongue, 
 and withal tunable and melodious, as a kind of 
 Music, and therefore may be termed a musical 
 speech or utterance, which cannot but please the 
 hearer very well. Another cause is that it is 
 briefer and more compendious and easier to bear 
 away and be retained in memory than that which 
 is contained in multitude of words and full of 
 tedious ambage and long periods. It is beside a 
 manner of utterance more eloquent and rhetorical 
 than the ordinary prose which we use in our daily
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 125 
 
 talk : because it is decked and set out with all 
 manner of fresh colours and figures, which maketh 
 that it sooner inveigleth the judgment of man, 
 and carrieth his opinion this way and that, whither- 
 soever the heart by impression of the ear shall be 
 most affectionately bent and directed. 
 
 The utterance in prose is not of so great efficacy 
 because not only it is daily used, and by that 
 occasion the ear is overglutted with it, but is also 
 not so voluble and slipper upon the tongue, being 
 wide and loose, and nothing numerous, nor con- 
 trived into measures, and sounded with so gallant 
 and harmonical accents, nor in fine allowed that 
 figurative conveyance, nor so great licence in 
 choice of words and phrases as metre is. So that 
 the Poets were also from the beginning the best 
 persuaders and their eloquence the first Rhetoric 
 of the world. 
 
 Even so it became that the high mysteries of 
 the gods should be revealed and taught by a 
 manner of utterance and language of extraordinary 
 phrase, and brief and compendious, and above all 
 others sweet and civil as the metrical is. The 
 same also was meetest to register the lives and 
 noble jests of Princes, and of the great Monarchs 
 of the world, and all other the memorable accidents 
 of time : so that the Poet was also the first his- 
 toriographer 6 . 
 
 6 Puttenham should have drawn his instance from 
 ballad-poetry. The Homeric poems are doubtless founded 
 on the ballads brought from camp to camp by minstrels. 
 It must be recollected that P uttenham's object is popular 
 in scope : he is interested in asserting the importance of 
 poetry, rather than in discovering or discussing its 
 scientific origins.
 
 126 George Puttenham 
 
 Then, forasmuch as they were the first observers 
 of all natural causes and effects in the things 
 generable and corruptible, and from thence 
 mounted up to search after the celestial courses 
 and influences, and yet penetrated further to 
 know the divine essences and substances separate, 
 as is said before, they were the first Astronomers 
 and Philosophists and Metaphysics. 
 
 Finally, because they did altogether endeavour 
 themselves to reduce the life of man to a certain 
 method of good manners, and made the first 
 differences between virtue and vice, and then 
 tempered all these knowledges and skills with 
 the exercise of a delectable Music by melodious 
 instruments, which withal served them to delight 
 their hearers, and to call the people together by 
 admiration to a plausible and virtuous conversation, 
 therefore were they the first Philosophers Ethic 
 and the first artificial Musicians of the world. 
 Such was Linus, Orpheus, Amphion and Musaeus 
 the most ancient Poets and Philosophers, of whom 
 there is left any memory by the profane writers. 
 King David also and Solomon, his son, and many 
 other of the holy Prophets wrote in metres, and 
 used to sing them to the harp, although to many 
 of us ignorant of the Hebrew language and phrase 
 and not observing it, the same seem but a prose. 
 It cannot be therefore that any scorn or indignity 
 should justly be offered to so noble, profitable, 
 ancient and divine a science as Poetry is.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 127 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW THE WILD AND SAVAGE PEOPLE USED A 
 NATURAL POESY IN VERSICLE AND RHYME AS 
 OUR VULGAR IS. 
 
 AND the Greek and Latin Poesy was by verse 
 numerous and metrical, running upon pleasant 
 feet, sometimes swift, sometimes slow (their 
 words very aptly serving that purpose), but 
 without any rhyme or tunable concord in the end 
 of their verses, as we and all other nations now 
 use. But the Hebrews and Chaldees, who were 
 more ancient than the Greeks, did not only use a 
 metrical Poesy but also with the same a manner 
 of rhyme, as hath been of late observed by learned 
 men. Whereby it appeareth that our vulgar 
 running Poesy was common to all the nations 
 of the world besides whom the Latins and Greeks 
 in special called barbarous. So that it was not- 
 withstanding the first and most ancient Poesy 
 and the most universal, which two points do 
 otherwise give to all humane inventions and 
 affairs no small credit. 
 
 This is proved by certificate of merchants and 
 travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed 
 the whole world and discovered large countries 
 and strange peoples wild and savage, affirming 
 that the American, the Perusine, and the very 
 Cannibal, do sing and also say their highest and 
 holiest matters in certain rhyming versicles and 
 not in prose, which proves also that our manner 
 of vulgar Poesy is more ancient than the artificial
 
 128 George Puttenham 
 
 of the Greeks and Latins, ours coming by instinct 
 of nature, which was before Art or observation, 
 and used with the savage and uncivil, who were 
 before all science or civility, even as the naked 
 by priority of time is before the clothed, and the 
 ignorant before the learned. The natural Poesy 
 therefore, being aided and amended by Art, and 
 not utterly altered or obscured, but some sign 
 left of it (as the Greeks and Latins have left none), 
 is no less to be allowed and commended than 
 theirs 7 . 
 
 ' The argument in this chapter is not convincing. 
 If rhyme is merely a savage device for mnemonic con- 
 venience in the absence of writing, comparable to the 
 convenience of nakedness versus clothes, the defence of 
 rhyme falls to the ground. Superior antiquity is not neces- 
 sarily superior art. As a fact, Marlowe in this age was 
 the first to realize and display the capabilities of un- 
 rhymed verse in dramatic composition, and the use of 
 rhyme has since been gradually restricted in English 
 practice to the less exalted forms of poetry, epic and 
 dramatic poems (with certain variants of epos, such as 
 Tennyson's Idylls of the King) being composed in blank 
 verse. The decay of rhyme as an ornament to narrative 
 poetry can be traced from the pointed distichs of Pope 
 in the eighteenth century through the broken paragraphs 
 of music, still composed in rhymed couplets, of Keats at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth, to the blank verse of 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson. In certain kinds of gorgeous 
 narration, such as William Morris's Earthly Paradise, 
 an elaborate scheme of rhyme adds as in Spenser's 
 Faerie Queen to the decorative effect. Shakespeare's 
 disuse of rhyme is an interesting chapter in the psychology 
 of poetry, and Milton, of course, disdained so meretricious, 
 an aid to musical expression. 
 ' Vulgar ' above = current, usual.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 129 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HOW THE RHYMING POESY CAME FIRST TO THE 
 GRECIANS AND LATINS, AND HAD ALTERED AND 
 ALMOST SPOILT THEIR MANNER OF POESY. 
 
 BUT it came to pass, when fortune fled far from 
 the Greeks and Latins, and that their towns 
 flourished no more in traffic, nor their Universities 
 in learning as they had done continuing those 
 Monarchies, the barbarous conquerors invading 
 them with innumerable swarms of strange nations, 
 the Poesy metrical of the Grecians and Latins 
 came to be much corrupted and altered, insomuch 
 that there were times that the very Greeks and 
 Latins themselves took pleasure in rhyming verses, 
 and used it as a rare and gallant thing. Yea, 
 their Orators profess the Doctors' Sermons were 
 acceptable neither to Princes nor yet to the 
 common people unless it went in manner of 
 tunable rhyme or metrical sentences, as appears 
 by many of the ancient writers, about that time 
 and since. And the great Princes, and Popes, 
 and Sultans would salute and greet one another 
 sometimes in friendship and sport, sometimes in 
 earnest and enmity by rhyming verses, and 
 nothing seemed clerkly done but must be done 
 in rhyme ; whereof we find divers examples from 
 the time of the Emperors Gracian and Valentinian 
 downwards. For thenabouts began the declin- 
 ation of the Roman Empire, by the notable inun- 
 dations of the Huns and Vandals in Europe, 
 E.L. I
 
 130 George Puttenham 
 
 under the conduct of Totila and Attila and other 
 their generals. 
 
 This brought the rhyming Poesy in grace, 
 and made it prevail in Italy and Greece (their 
 own long time cast aside, and almost neglected), 
 till after many years the peace of Italy and of the 
 Empire Occidental revived new clerks, who 
 recovering and perusing the books and studies 
 of the civiller ages, restored all manner of arts, 
 and that of the Greek and Latin Poesy withal, 
 into their former purity and neatness. Which 
 nevertheless did not so prevail, but that the 
 rhyming Poesy of the Barbarians remained still 
 in its reputation, that one in the school, this other 
 in Courts of Princes more ordinary and allowable. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HOW IN THE TIME OF CHARLEMAGNE AND MANY 
 YEARS AFTER HIM THE LATIN POETS WROTE 
 IN RHYME. 
 
 AND this appeareth evidently by the works of 
 many learned men, who wrote about the time 
 of Charlemagne's reign in the Empire Occidental, 
 where the Christian Religion became through the 
 excessive authority of Popes and deep devotion 
 of Princes strongly fortified and established by 
 erection of orders Monastical, in which many 
 simple clerks for devotion sake and sanctity were 
 received more than for any learning, by which
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 131 
 
 occasion and the solitariness of their life waxing 
 studious without discipline or instruction by any 
 good method, some of them grew to be historio- 
 graphers, some Poets, and following either the 
 barbarous rudeness of the time, or else their own 
 idle inventions, all that they wrote to the favour 
 or praise of Princes, they did it in such manner 
 of minstrelsy, and thought themselves no small 
 fools, when they could make their verses go all in 
 rhyme as did the school of Salerne, dedicating 
 their book of medicinal rules unto our king of 
 England, with this beginning : 
 
 Anglorum Rege scripsit tota schola Salerni 
 Si vis incolumem, si vis te reddere sanum 
 Curas tolle graves, irasci crede prophanum 
 Nee retine ventrem nee stringas fortiter anum. 
 
 And all the rest that follow throughout the 
 whole book more curiously than cleanly, never- 
 theless very well to the purpose of their art. 
 
 In the same time King Edward III, himself 
 quartering the Arms of England and France, did 
 discover his pretence and claim to the Crown of 
 France in these rhyming verses : 
 
 Rex sum regnorum bina ratione duorum 
 Anglorum regno sum rex ego iure paterno 
 Matris iure quidem Francorum nuncupor idem 
 Hinc est armorum variatio facta meorum. 
 
 Which verses Philip de Valois then possessing 
 the Crown as next heir male by pretext of the 
 law Salique,' and holding out Edward the Third, 
 answered in these other of as good stuff :
 
 132 George Puttenham 
 
 Praedo regnorum qui diceris esse duorum 
 Regno materno privaberis atque paterno 
 Prolis ius nullum ubi matris non fuit ullum 
 Hinc est armorum variatio stulta tuorum. 
 
 It is found written of Pope Lucius for his great 
 avarice and tyranny used over the Clergy thus in 
 rhyming verses : 
 
 Lucius est piscis rex et tyrannus aquarum 
 A quo discordat Lucius iste parum 
 Devorat hie homines, his piscibus insidiatur 
 Esurit hie semper hie aliquando satur 
 Amborum vitam silaus asquata notaret 
 Plus rationis habet qui ratione caret. 
 
 And as this was used in the greatest and gayest 
 matters of Princes and Popes by the idle invention 
 of Monastical men then reigning all in their super- 
 lative, so did every scholar and secular clerk or 
 versifier, when he wrote any short poem or matter 
 of good lesson, put it in rhyme, whereby it came 
 to pass that all your old Proverbs and common 
 sayings, which they would have plausible to the 
 reader and easy to remember and bear away, were 
 of that sort as these : 
 
 In mundo mira faciunt duo nummus et ira 
 Mollificant dura pervertunt omnia iura. 
 
 And this verse in dispraise of the Courtier's 
 life following the Court of Rome : 
 
 Vita palatina dura est animaeque ruina. 
 And these written by a noble learned man : 
 
 Ire redire sequi regum sublimia castra 
 Eximius status est, sed non sic itur ad astra.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 133 
 
 And this other which to the great injury of all 
 women was written (no doubt by some forlorn 
 lover, or else some old malicious Monk) for one 
 woman's sake blemishing the whole sex: 
 
 Fallere flere nere mentiri nilque tacere 
 Haec quinque vere statuit Deus in muliere. 
 
 If I might have been his Judge, I would have 
 had him for his labour served as Orpheus was by 
 the women of Thrace. His eyes to be picked 
 out with pins for his so deadly belying of them, 
 or worse handled if worse could be devised. But 
 will ye see how God raised a revenger for the 
 silly innocent women, for about the same rhyming 
 age came an honest civil Courtier somewhat 
 bookish, and wrote these verses against the whole 
 rabble of Monks : 
 
 O Monachi vestri stomach! sunt amphora Bacchi 
 Vos estis Deus est testis turpissima pestis. 
 
 Anon after came your secular Priests as jolly 
 rhymers as the rest, who being sore aggrieved with 
 their Pope Calixtus, for that he had enjoined them 
 from their wives, and railed as fast against him : 
 
 O bone Calixte totus mundus perodit te 
 Quondam Presbiteri, poterant uxoribus uti 
 Hoc destruxisti, postquam tu Papa fuisti. 
 
 Thus, what in writing of rhymes and registering 
 of lies, was the Clergy of that fabulous age wholly 
 occupied. 
 
 We find some but very few of these rhyming 
 verses among the Latins of the civiller ages, and 
 those rather happening by chance than of any
 
 134 George Puttenham 
 
 purpose in the writer, as this Distich among the 
 disports of Ovid : 
 
 Quot ccelum stellas tot habet tua Roma puellas 
 Pascua quotque hasdos tot habet tua Roma Cynaedos. 
 
 The posterity taking pleasure in this manner 
 of symphony had leisure as it seems to devise 
 many other knacks in their versifying that the 
 ancient and civil Poets had not used before, 
 whereof one was to make every word of a verse 
 to begin with the same letter, as did Hugobald the 
 Monk who made a large poem to the honour of 
 Carolus Calvus, every word beginning with C, 
 which was the first letter of the king's name, thus : 
 
 Carmina clarisonae Calvis cantate camenae. 
 
 And this was thought no small piece of cunning, 
 being indeed a matter of some difficulty to find out 
 so many words beginning with one letter as 
 might make a just volume, though in truth it 
 were but a phantastical device and to no purpose 
 at all more than to make them harmonical to 
 the rude ears of those barbarous ages. 
 
 Another of their pretty inventions was to 
 make a verse of such words as by their nature 
 and manner of construction and situation might 
 be turned backward word by word, and make 
 another perfect verse, but of quite contrary sense, 
 as the gibing Monk that wrote of Pope Alexander 
 these two verses : 
 
 Laus tua non tua fraus, virtus non copia rerum, 
 Scamlere te faciunt hoc decus eximium.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 135 
 
 Which if ye will turn backwards they make 
 two other good verses, but of a contrary sense, 
 thus : 
 
 Eximium decus hoc faciunt te scandere, rerum 
 Copia, non virtus, fraus tua non tua laus. 
 
 And they called it Verse Lyon. 
 
 Thus you may see the humours and appetites 
 of men, how divers and changeable they be in 
 liking new fashions, though many times worse 
 than the old, and not only in the manner of their 
 life and use of their garments, but also in their 
 learnings and arts and specially of their languages 8 . 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IN WHAT REPUTATION POESY AND POETS WERE IN 
 OLD TIME WITH PRINCES AND OTHERWISE 
 GENERALLY, AND HOW THEY BE NOW BECOME 
 CONTEMPTIBLE AND FOR WHAT CAUSES. 
 
 FOR the respects aforesaid in all former ages 
 and in the most civil countries and commonwealths 
 good Poets and Poesy were highly esteemed and 
 much favoured of the greatest Princes. For 
 proof whereof we read how much Amyntas, King 
 of Macedonia, made of the Tragical Poet Euripides. 
 And the Athenians of Sophocles. In what price 
 
 8 The conclusion is more valuable than the examples, 
 though it is interesting to note Puttenham's contempt 
 for the monks so shortly after the suppression of the 
 Monasteries by Henry VIII (1539)
 
 136 George Puttenham 
 
 the noble poems of Homer were holden with 
 Alexander the great, insomuch that every night 
 they were laid under his pillow, and by day were 
 carried in the rich jewel coffer of Darius lately 
 before vanquished by him in battle. And not 
 only Homer, the father and Prince of the Poets, 
 was so honoured by him, but for his sake all other 
 meaner Poets, insomuch that Cherillus, one no 
 very great good Poet, had for every verse well 
 made a Philip's noble of gold, amounting in value 
 to an angel English, and so for every hundred 
 verses (which a cleanly pen could speedily dispatch) 
 he had a hundred angels. 
 
 And since Alexander the Great how Theocritus, 
 the Greek poet was favoured by Ptolemy King 
 of Egypt and Queen Berenice his wife, Ennius 
 likewise by Scipio, Prince of the Romans, Virgil 
 also by the Emperor Augustus. And in later 
 times how much were Jehan de Mehune and 
 Guillaume de Loris made of by the French kings, 
 and Geoffrey Chaucer, father of our English poets, 
 by Richard the Second, who as it was supposed 
 gave him the manor of new Holme in Oxfordshire. 
 And Gower to Henry the Fourth, and Harding to 
 Edward the Fourth. Also how Francis, the French 
 king, made Sangelais, Salmonius, Macrinus, and 
 Clement Marot of his privy Chamber for their 
 excellent skill in vulgar and Latin Poesy. And 
 King Henry VIII, her Majesty's father, for a few 
 Psalms of David turned into English metre by 
 Sternhold, made him groom of his privy chamber, 
 and gave him many other good gifts. And one 
 Gray, what good estimation did he grow unto with 
 the same King Henry and afterward with the
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 137 
 
 Duke of Somerset, Protector, for making certain 
 merry Ballads, whereof one chiefly was c The hunt 
 is up, the hunt is up '. And Queen Mary, his 
 daughter, for one Epithalamy or nuptial song 
 made by Vargas, a Spanish Poet, at her marriage 
 with King Philip in Winchester, gave him during 
 his life two hundred crowns pension : nor this 
 reputation was given them in ancient times al- 
 together in respect that Poesy was a delicate 
 art, and the Poets themselves cunning Prince- 
 pleasers, but for that also they were thought for 
 their universal knowledge to be very sufficient 
 men for the greatest charges in their commonwealth 
 were it for counsel or for conduct, whereby no 
 man need to doubt but that both skills may very 
 well concur and be most excellent in one person. 
 For we find that Julius Caesar, the first Emperor 
 and a most noble captain, was not only the most 
 eloquent Orator of his time but also a very good 
 Poet, though none of his doings therein be now 
 extant. And Quintus Catullus, a good Poet, and 
 Cornelius Gallus, treasurer of Egypt, and Horace, 
 the most delicate of all the Roman Lyrics, was 
 thought meet and by many letters of great instance 
 provoked to be Secretary of State to Augustus 
 the Emperor, which nevertheless he refused for 
 his unhealthfulness' sake, and being a quiet 
 minded man and nothing ambitious of glory : non 
 voluit accede? e ad Rempublicam, as it is reported. 
 And Ennius, the Latin Poet, was not, as some 
 perchance think, only favoured by Scipio the 
 African for his good making of verses, but used as 
 his familiar and counsellor in the wars for his great 
 knowledge and amiable conversation. And long
 
 138 George Puttenham 
 
 before that Antimenides and other Greek Poets, 
 as Aristotle reports in his Politics, had charge in 
 the wars. And Tyrtseus the Poet, being also a 
 lame man and halting upon one leg, was chosen by 
 the Oracle of the gods from the Athenians to be 
 general of the Lacedaemonians' army, not for his 
 Poetry, but for his wisdom and grave persuasions 
 and subtle stratagems, whereby he had the victory 
 over his enemies. So that the Poets seemed to 
 have skill not only in the subtleties of their art 
 but also to be meet for all manner of functions 
 civil and martial, even as they found favour of 
 the times they lived in, insomuch as their credit 
 and estimation generally was not small. 
 
 But in these days (although some learned 
 Princes may take delight in them) yet universally 
 it is not so. For as well Poets as Poesy are des- 
 pised, and the name become, of honourable 
 infamous, subject to scorn and derision, and 
 rather a reproach than a praise to any that useth 
 it 9 . For commonly whoso is studious in the Art, 
 or shows himself excellent in it, they call him in 
 disdain a phantastical, and a light-headed or 
 phantastical man (by conversion) they call a Poet. 
 And this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance 
 of the time, and pride of many Gentlemen and 
 others whose gioss heads not being brought up 
 or acquainted with any excellent Art, nor able to 
 contrive or in manner conceive any matter of 
 subtlety in any business or science, they do deride 
 and scorn it in all others as superfluous knowledges 
 
 9 This recurring note of apology is once more to be 
 traced to the influences which are represented by Gosson's 
 School of Abuse.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 139 
 
 and vain sciences, and what soever device be of 
 rare invention they term it phantastical, construing 
 it to the worst side. And among men such as be 
 modest and grave, and of little conversation, nor 
 delighted in the busy life and vain ridiculous 
 actions of the popular, they call him in scorn a 
 Philosopher or Poet, as much to say as a phan- 
 tastical man, very injuriously (God wot) and to the 
 manifestation of their own ignorance, not making 
 difference betwixt terms. 
 
 For as the evil and vicious disposition of the 
 brain hinders the sound judgment and discourse 
 of man with busy and disordered phantasies, for 
 which cause the Greeks call him c/javrao-n^o?, so 
 is that part being well affected not only nothing 
 disorderly or confused with any monstrous 
 imaginations or conceits, but very formal, and in 
 its much multiformity uniform, that is well-pro- 
 portioned and so passing clear that by it as by 
 a glass or mirror are represented unto the soul all 
 manner of beautiful visions, whereby the inventive 
 part of the mind is so much holpen, as without it 
 no man could devise any new or rare thing. And 
 where it is not excellent in its kind, there could be 
 no politic captain, nor any witty engineer 01 
 cunning artificer, nor yet any law-maker or 
 counsellor of deep discourse. Yea, the Prince oJ 
 Philosophers sticks not to say animam non in- 
 telligere absque phantasmate, which text to anothei 
 purpose Alexander Aphrodiscus well noteth, as 
 learned men know. 
 
 And this phantasy may be resembled to a 
 glass, as hath been said, whereof there be many 
 tempers and manner of makings, as the per-
 
 140 George Puttenham 
 
 spectives do acknowledge. For some be false 
 glasses and show things otherwise than they be 
 indeed, and others right as they be indeed, neither 
 fairer nor fouler, nor greater nor smaller. There 
 be again of these glasses that show things exceeding 
 fair and comely, others that show figures very 
 monstrous and illfavoured. Even so is the 
 phantastical part of man (if it be not disordered) 
 a representer of the best, most comely and beautiful 
 images or appearances of things to the soul and 
 according to their very truth. If otherwise, then 
 doth it breed chimaras and monsters in man's 
 imaginations, and not only in his imaginations, 
 but also in all his ordinary actions and life which 
 ensues. Wherefore such persons as be illuminated 
 with the brightest irradiations of knowledge and 
 of the verity and due proportion of things, they 
 are called by the learned men not phantastici but 
 euphantasiote, and of this sort of phantasy are all 
 good Poets, notable captains stratagematic, all 
 cunning artificers and engineers, all Legislators, 
 Politicians and Counsellors of estate, in whose 
 exercises the inventive part is most employed and 
 is to the sound and true judgment of man most 
 needful 10 . 
 
 This diversity in the terms perchance every man 
 hath not noted, and thus much be said in defence 
 of the Poet's honour, to the end no noble and 
 generous mind be discomforted in the study 
 thereof, the rather for that worthy and honourable 
 
 10 Puttenham is groping in the foregoing remarks 
 towards a description of the faculty which now is called 
 imagination.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 141 
 
 memorial of that noble woman twice French Queen, 
 Lady Anne of Britain, wife first to King Charles 
 VIII, and after to Lewis XII, who passing one day 
 from her lodging toward the king's side, saw in a 
 gallery Master Allan Chartier the king's secretary, 
 an excellent maker or Poet leaning on a table's 
 end asleep, and stooped down to kiss him, saying 
 thus in all their hearings : ' We may not of Princely 
 courtesy pass by and not honour with our kiss the 
 mouth from whence so many sweet ditties and 
 golden poems have issued '. But methinks at 
 these words I hear some smilingly say, I would be 
 loth to lack living of my own till the Prince gave 
 me a manner of new Elm li for my rhyming. And 
 another to say, I have read that the Lady Cynthia 
 came once down out of her sky to kiss the fair 
 young lad Endymion as he lay asleep ; and many 
 noble Queens that have bestowed kisses upon their 
 Princes' paramours, but never upon any Poets. 
 The third, methinks, shruggingly saith, I kept 
 not to sit sleeping with my Poesy till a Queen 
 came and kissed me. But what of all this ? 
 Princes may give a good Poet such convenient 
 countenance and also benefit as are due to an 
 excellent artificer, though they neither kiss nor 
 coax them, and the discreet Poet looks for no such 
 extraordinary favours, and as well doth he honour 
 by his pen the just, liberal or magnanimous Prince, 
 as the valiant, amiable or beautiful, though they 
 be every one of them the good gifts of God. 
 
 So it seems not altogether the scorn and ordinary 
 disgrace offered unto Poets at these days is cause 
 why few Gentlemen do delight in the Art, but for 
 11 Elm = elmess = alms.
 
 142 George Puttenham 
 
 that liberality is come to fail in Princes, who for 
 their largess were wont to be accounted the only 
 patrons of learning and first founders of all ex- 
 cellent artificers. Besides it is not perceived, that 
 Princes themselves do take any pleasure in this 
 science, by whose example the subject is commonly 
 led and allured to all delights and exercises, be they 
 good or bad, according to the grave saying of the 
 historian : Rex multitudinem religions implevit, 
 quee semper regenti similis est. And peradventure, 
 in this iron and malicious age of ours, Princes are 
 less delighted in it, being over earnestly bent and 
 affected to the affairs of Empire and ambition, 
 whereby they are as it were enforced to endeavour 
 themselves to arms and practices of hostility, or to 
 intend to the right policing of their states, and 
 have not one hour to bestow upon any other civil 
 or delectable Art of natural or moral doctrine, 
 nor scarce any leisure to think one good thought 
 in perfect and godly contemplation, whereby their 
 troubled minds might be moderated and brought 
 to tranquillity 12 . So that it is hard to find in 
 these days of noblemen or gentlemen any good 
 Mathematician, or excellent Musician, or notable 
 Philosopher, or else a cunning Poet, because we 
 find few great Princes much delighted in the same 
 
 12 The argument in this paragraph has amari aliquid, 
 a touch of bitterness. Where so little is known of the author 
 of this treatise, it is admissible to conjecture that he had 
 had rebuffs in high places. Promotion under Elizabeth 
 depended almost entirely on ' the favour of Princes ' 
 (cp. Shakespeare's Henry VIII, Bacon's Essays, Memoirs 
 of Robert Gary, Earl of Monmouth, etc.), and every career 
 was open to talent, so that 'jthis iron and malicious age 
 of ours ' has a personal sound.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 143 
 
 studies. Now also of such among the Nobility 
 or gentry as be very well seen in many laudable 
 sciences and especially in making of Poesy it is so 
 come to pass that they have no courage to write, 
 and if they have, yet are they loth to be a-known 
 of their skill. So that I know very many notable 
 Gentlemen in the Court that have written com- 
 mendably and suppressed it again, or else suffered 
 it to be published without their own names to it : 
 as if it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seem 
 learned, and to show himself amorous of any good 
 Art. 
 
 In other ages it was not so, for we read that 
 Kings and Princes have written great volumes and 
 published them under their own regal titles. As, 
 to begin with, Solomon the wisest of Kings, Julius 
 Caesar the greatest of Emperors, Hermes Tris- 
 megistus the holiest of Priests and Prophets ; 
 Evax, king of Arabia, wrote a book of precious 
 stones in verse ; Prince Avicenna, of Physic and 
 Philosophy ; Alphonsus, King of Spain, his astrono- 
 mical Tables ; Almansor, a king of Morocco, 
 diverse Philosophical works, and by their regal 
 example our late sovereign Lord King Henry the 
 Eighth wrote a book in defence of his faith 13 , 
 then persuaded that it was the true and Apostolical 
 doctrine, though it hath appeared otherwise since, 
 yet his honour and learned zeal was nothing less 
 to be allowed. Queens also have been known 
 studious and to write large volumes, as Lady 
 Margaret of France, Queen of Navarre in our 
 
 13 Henry VIII's book was the Assertio septem Sacra- 
 mentorum, written against Luther in 1521, twelve years 
 before his excommunication by the Pope. He also wrote 
 a preface to the Institution of a Christian Man.
 
 144 George Puttenham 
 
 time 14 . But of all others the Emperor Nero was 
 so well learned in Music and Poesy that, when he 
 was taken by order of the Senate and appointed 
 to die, he offered violence to himself and said, 
 quantus artifex pereo ! , as much as to say : How is 
 it possible a man of such science and learning as 
 myself should come to this shameful death ? 
 The Emperor Octavian being made executor to 
 Virgil, who had left by his last will and testament, 
 that his books of the ^Eneid should be committed 
 to the fire as things not perfected by him, made 
 his excuse for infringing the dead's will by a 
 number of verses most excellently written, whereof 
 these are part : 
 
 Frangatur potius legum veneranda potestas, 
 Quam tot congestos noctesque diesque labores 
 Hauserit una dies 
 
 and put his name to them. And before him his 
 uncle and father-adoptive Julius Caesar was not 
 ashamed to publish under his own name his 
 Commentaries of the French and Britannic wars. 
 Since therefore so many noble Emperors, Kings 
 and Princes have been studious of Poesy and 
 other civil arts, and not ashamed to bewray their 
 skills in the same, let none other meaner person 
 despise learning, nor (whether it be in prose or in 
 Poesy, if they themselves be able to write, or have 
 written anything well or of rare invention) be any 
 whit squeamish to let it be published under their 
 
 14 The Heptameron, 1558. The other examples of royal 
 authorship industriously collected by Puttenham need 
 not detain us ; we may add the names of King Charles I 
 (Eihon Basilike) and Queen Victoria to the list.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 145 
 
 names, for reason serves it and modesty doth not 
 repugn. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW POESY SHOULD NOT BE EMPLOYED UPON VAIN 
 CONCEITS, OR VICIOUS, OR INFAMOUS. 
 
 WHEREFORE, the nobility and dignity of the Art 
 considered, as well by universality as antiquity 
 and the natural excellence of itself, Poesy ought 
 not to be abased and employed upon any unworthy 
 matter and subject, nor used to vain purposes, 
 which nevertheless is daily seen, and that is to 
 utter conceits infamous and vicious or ridiculous 
 and foolish, or of no good example and doctrine. 
 Albeit in merry matters (not unhonest) being used 
 for man's solace and recreation it may be well 
 allowed, for as I said before, Poesy is a pleasant 
 manner of utterance, varying from the ordinary 
 of purpose to refresh the mind by the ears' delight. 
 
 Poesy also is not only laudable because I said 
 it was a metrical speech used by the first men, but 
 because it is a metrical speech corrected and 
 reformed by discreet judgments and with no less 
 cunning and curiosity than the Greek and Latin 
 Poesy, and by Art beautified and adorned and 
 brought far from the primitive rudeness of the 
 first inventors ; otherwise it may be said to me 
 that Adam and Eve's aprons were the gayest 
 garments because they were the first, and the 
 shepherd's tent or pavilion the best housing 
 because it was the most ancient and most universal. 
 
 E.L. K
 
 146 George Puttenham 
 
 Which I would not have so taken, for it is not my 
 meaning ; but that Art and cunning, concurring 
 with nature, antiquity and universality, in things 
 indifferent, and not evil, do make them more 
 laudable 15 . And right so our vulgar rhyming 
 Poesy, being by good wits brought to that perfec- 
 tion, we see is worthily to be preferred before any 
 other manner of utterance in prose, for such use 
 and to such purpose as it is ordained and shall 
 hereafter be set down more particularly. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SUBJECT OR MATTER OF POESY 
 
 HAVING sufficiently said of the dignity of Poets 
 and Poesy, now it is time to speak of the matter 
 or subject of Poesy, which to mine intent is what- 
 soever witty i 6 and delicate conceit of man meet 
 
 15 This modifies the views expressed by Puttenham 
 in Ch. V above ; see note in loc. 
 
 16 The Elizabethan meaning of ' witty ' differs some- 
 what from the modern sense. ' Wit ', briefly, was equiva- 
 lent to what we call ' culture ' to-day. This culture, 
 however, was more or less an artificial product ; at least 
 it was imported raw. In other words the ' wits ' of the Court 
 had no prose language of culture. They had to introduce 
 it from abroad, modelling their cultivated style for speech 
 and writing on the ' alto estilo ' of Guevara's Dial of Princes, 
 translated by Sir Thomas North in 1557, and on other 
 arbiters of culture, who themselves went back to ancient 
 Roman types of sentence-building. The cult of culture 
 was driven to excess, and mannerisms of writing were 
 exaggerated in the forms of antitheses, alliteration (known 
 as ' letter-hunting '), and so forth. Lyly's Euphues (sub- 
 titled The Anatomy of Wit=the analysis of culture) gave 
 the impetus to the movement in England. 
 
 ' Conceit ' = conception.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 147 
 
 or worthy to be put in written verse, for any 
 necessary use of the present time, or good instruc- 
 tion of the posterity. 
 
 But the chief and principal is : the laud, honour 
 and glory of the immortal gods (I speak now in 
 phrase of the Gentiles). Secondly, the worthy 
 gests of noble Princes : the memorial and registry 
 of all great fortunes, the praise of virtue and 
 reproof of vice, the instruction of moral doctrines, 
 the revealing of sciences natural and other pro- 
 fitable Arts, the redress of boisterous and sturdy 
 courages by persuasion, the consolation and 
 repose of temperate minds, finally the common 
 solace of mankind in all his travails and cares of 
 this transitory life. And in this last sort, being 
 used for recreation only, may allowably bear 
 matter not always of the gravest or of any great 
 commodity or profit, but rather, in some sort, vain, 
 dissolute, or wanton, so it be not very scandalous 
 and of evil example. 
 
 But as our intent is to make this Art vulgar for 
 all Englishmen's use, and therefore is of necessity 
 to set down the principal rules therein to be 
 observed, so in mine opinion it is no less expedient 
 to touch briefly all the chief points of this ancient 
 Poesy of the Greeks and Latins, so far forth as it 
 conformeth with ours. So as it may be known 
 what we hold of them as borrowed and what as of 
 our own peculiar. Wherefore now that we have 
 said what is the matter of Poesy, we will declare 
 the manner and forms of poems used by the 
 ancients.
 
 148 George Puttenham 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OF POEMS AND THEIR SUNDRY FORMS AND HOW 
 THEREBY THE ANCIENT POETS RECEIVED SURNAMES. 
 
 As the matter of Poesy is diverse so was the form 
 of their poems and manner of writing, for all of 
 them wrote not in one sort, even as all of them 
 wrote not upon one matter. Neither was every 
 Poet alike cunning in all as in some one kind of 
 Poesy, nor uttered with like felicity. But wherein 
 any one most excelled, thereof he took a sur- 
 name 17 , as to be called a Poet Heroic, Lyric, 
 Elegiac, Epigrammatist, or otherwise. 
 
 Such therefore as gave themselves to write long 
 histories of the noble gests of kings and great 
 princes intermeddling the dealings of the gods, 
 half-gods or heroes of the gentiles, and the great 
 and weighty consequences of peace and war, they 
 called Poets Heroic, whereof Homer was chief and 
 most ancient among the Greeks, Virgil among the 
 Latins. Others who more delighted to write 
 songs or ballads of pleasure, to be sung with the 
 voice and to the harp, lute, or citheron and such 
 other musical instruments, they were called 
 melodious Poets, or by a more common name 
 Lyric Poets, of which sort was Pindar, Anacreon 
 and Callimachus with others among the Greeks, 
 Horace and Catullus among the Latins. There 
 were another sort who sought the favour of fair 
 Ladies, and coveted to bemoan their estates at 
 
 17 The ' surname ' is, of course, a descriptive epithet 
 limiting the extension of 'poet' to!the particular kind 
 of poetry affected.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 149 
 
 large and the perplexities of love in a certain 
 piteous verse called Elegy, and thence were called 
 Elegiac : such among the Latins were Ovid, 
 Tibullus, and Propertius. 
 
 There were also Poets that wrote only for the 
 stage, I mean plays and interludes, to recreate the 
 people with matters of disport, and to that intent 
 did set forth in shows, pageants accompanied 
 with speech, the common behaviours and manner 
 of life of private persons, and such as were the 
 meaner sort of men, and they were called Comical 
 Poets, of whom among the Greeks Menander and 
 Aristophanes were most excellent, with the Latins 
 Terence and Plautus. Besides those Poets Comic 
 there were other who served also the stage, but 
 meddled not with so base matters. For they set 
 forth the doleful falls of unfortunate and afflicted 
 Princes, and were called Poets Tragical. Such 
 were Euripides and Sophocles with the Greeks, 
 Seneca among the Latins. 
 
 There were yet others who mounted nothing so 
 high as any of them both, but in base and humble 
 style by manner of Dialogue uttered the private 
 and familiar talk of the meanest sort of men, as 
 shepherds, haywards 18 and such like : such was 
 among the Greeks Theocritus, and Virgil among 
 the Latins ; their poems were named Eclogues or 
 shepherdly talk. 
 
 There was yet another kind of Poet, who in- 
 tended to tax the common abuses and vice of the 
 people in rough and bitter speeches, and their 
 invectives were called Satires, and themselves 
 
 18 Hay ward = warder of the common : one of his duties 
 was to prevent cattle from breaking the hedge ( = hay).
 
 150 George Puttenham 
 
 Satirics. Such were Lucilius, Juvenal and Persius 
 among the Latins, and with us he that wrote the 
 book called Piers plowman. Others of a more fine 
 and pleasant head were given wholly to taunting 
 and scoffing at indecent things, and in short poems 
 uttered pretty merry conceits, and these men were 
 called Epigrammatists. There were others that for 
 the people's good instruction and trial of their own 
 wits used in places of great assembly to say by 
 rote numbers of short and sententious metres, very 
 pithy and of good edification, and thereupon were 
 called Poets Mimists : as who would say, imitable 
 and meet to be followed for their wise and grave 
 lessons. 
 
 There was another kind of poem, invented only 
 to make sport and to refresh the company with a 
 manner of buffoonery or counterfeiting of merry 
 speeches, converting all that which they had heard 
 spoken before to a certain derision by a quite 
 contrary sense, and this was done when Comedies 
 or Tragedies were a-playing, and that between 
 the acts, when the players went to make ready for 
 another, there was great silence, and the people 
 waxed weary, then came in these manner of coun- 
 terfeit vices ; they were called Pantomimi, and all 
 that had before been said, or great part of it, they 
 gave a cross construction to it very ridiculously. 
 Thus have you how the names of the Poets were 
 given them by the forms of their poems and 
 manner of writing.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 151 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY THE GODS OF THE GENTILES 
 WERE PRAISED AND HONOURED. 
 
 THE gods of the Gentiles were honoured by their 
 Poets in hymns, which is an extraordinary and 
 divine praise, extolling and magnifying them for 
 their great powers and excellency of nature in the 
 highest degree of laud, and yet therein their 
 Poets were after a sort restrained, so that they 
 could not with their credit untruly praise their 
 own gods, or use in their lauds any manner of gross 
 adulation or unveritable report. For in any 
 writer untruth and flattery are counted most 
 great reproaches. Wherefore to praise the gods 
 of the Gentiles, for that by authority of their own 
 fabulous records they had fathers and mothers 
 and kindred and allies and wives and concubines, 
 the Poets first commended them by their gene- 
 alogies or pedigrees, their marriages and alliances, 
 their notable exploits in the world for the behoof 
 of mankind, and yet as I said before, none other- 
 wise than the truth of their own memorials might 
 bear, and in such sort as it might be well avouched 
 by their old written reports, though in very deed 
 they were not from the beginning all historically 
 true, and many of them very fictions, and such of 
 them as were true were grounded upon some part 
 of an history or matter of verity, the rest alto- 
 gether figurative and mystical, covertly applied 
 to some moral or natural sense, as Cicero setteth 
 it forth in his books De Natura Deorunt.
 
 152 George Puttenham 
 
 For to say that Jupiter was son to Saturn, and 
 that he married his own sister Juno, might be true, 
 for such was the guise of all great Princes in the 
 Oriental part of the world both at those days and 
 now is. Again, that he loved Danae, Europa, 
 Leda, Calisto and other fair Ladies, daughters to 
 kings, besides many meaner women, it is likely 
 enough, because he was reported to be a very 
 incontinent person ; but that he should be the 
 highest god in heaven, or that he should thunder 
 and lighten, and do many other things very 
 unnaturally and absurdly ; it seemeth to be some 
 witty device and fiction made for a purpose, or a 
 very noble and impudent lie, which could not be 
 reasonably suspected by the Poets, who were other- 
 wise discreet and grave men, and teachers of 
 wisdom to others. Therefore either to transgress 
 the rules of their primitive records, or to seek to 
 give their gods honour by belying them (otherwise 
 than in that sense which I have alleged), had 
 been a sign not only of an unskilful Poet but also 
 of a very impudent and lewd man. For untrue 
 praise never giveth any true reputation. 
 
 But with us Christians, who be better disciplined, 
 and do acknowledge but one God Almighty, ever- 
 lasting, and in every respect self-sufficient, reposed 
 in all perfect rest and sovereign bliss, not needing 
 or exacting any foreign help or good, to him we 
 cannot exhibit overmuch praise, nor belie him any 
 ways, unless it be in abasing his excellency by 
 scarcity of praise, or by misconceiving his divine 
 nature, weening to praise him, if we impute to 
 him such vain delights and peevish affections as 
 commonly the frailest men are reproved for
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 153 
 
 Namely to make him ambitious of honour, jealous 
 and difficult in his worships, terrible, angry, 
 vindictive, a lover, a hater, a pitier, and indigent 
 of man's worships : finally, so passionate as in 
 effect he should be altogether Anthropopathic l9 . 
 To the gods of the Gentiles they might well at- 
 tribute these infirmities, for they were but the 
 children of men, great Princes and famous in the 
 world, and not for any other respect divine than 
 by some resemblance of virtue they had to do 
 good and to benefit many. So, as to the God of 
 the Christians such divine praise might be verified, 
 to the other gods none, but figuratively or in 
 mystical sense, as hath been said. In which sort 
 the ancient Poets did indeed give them great 
 honours and praises, and made to them sacrifices, 
 and offered them oblations of sundry sorts, even 
 as the people were taught and persuaded by such 
 placations and worships to receive any help, 
 comfort or benefit to themselves, their wives, 
 children, possessions or goods. 
 
 For if that opinion were not, who would acknow- 
 ledge any God ?, the very etymology of the name 
 with us of the North parts of the world declaring 
 plainly the nature of the attribute, which is all 
 one as if we said good, or a giver of good things. 
 Therefore the Gentiles prayed for peace to the 
 goddess Pallas ; for war (such as thrived by it) to 
 the god Mars ; for honour and empire to the god 
 Jupiter ; for riches and wealth to Pluto : for 
 eloquence and gain to Mercury ; for safe navigation 
 
 19 Anthropopathic = of like passions or feelings as men ; 
 the common description of this attribute is anthropo- 
 morphic, meaning, literally, of the same form as men.
 
 154 George Puttenham 
 
 to Neptune ; for fair weather and prosperous winds 
 to jEolus ; for skill in music and leechcraft to 
 Apollo ; for free life and chastity to Diana ; for 
 beauty and good grace, as also for issue and 
 prosperity in love, to Venus ; for plenty of crop 
 and corn to Ceres ; for seasonable vintage to 
 Bacchus ; and for other things to others. So 
 many things as they could imagine good and 
 desirable, and to so many gods as they supposed 
 to be authors thereof, in so much as Fortune was 
 made a goddess, and the fever quartain had her 
 altars, such blindness and ignorance reigned in the 
 hearts of men at that time, and whereof it first 
 proceeded and grew, besides the opinion hath been 
 given, appeareth more at large in our books of 
 Hierotechni 20 , the matter being of another con- 
 sideration than to be treated of in this work. 
 
 And these hymns to the gods was the first form 
 of Poesy and the highest and the stateliest, and 
 they were sung by the Poets as priests, and by the 
 people or whole congregation as we sing in our 
 Churches the Psalms of David. But they did it 
 commonly in some shady groves of tall timber 
 trees, in which places they reared altars of green 
 turf, and bestrewed them all over with flowers, 
 and upon them offered their oblations and made 
 their bloody sacrifices (for no kind of gift can be 
 dearer than life) of such quick cattle as every god 
 was in their conceit most delighted in or in some 
 other respect most fit for the mystery. Temples 
 or churches or other chapels than these they had 
 none at those days. 
 
 $ 3 The book has not survived otherwise than in this 
 reference ; it shows the archaeological bent of Puttenham's 
 mind.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 155 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY VICE AND THE COMMON 
 ABUSES OF MAN'S LIFE WAS REPREHENDED. 
 
 SOME perchance would think that next after the 
 praise and honouring of their gods should com- 
 mence the worshippings and praise of good men, 
 and specially of great Princes and governors of the 
 earth in sovereignty and function next unto the 
 gods. But it is not so, for before that came to 
 pass the Poets or holy Priests chiefly studied the 
 rebuke of vice, and to carp at the common abuses, 
 such as were most offensive to the public and 
 private, for as yet for lack of good civility and 
 wholesome doctrines there was greater store of 
 lewd lourdains than of wise and learned Lords 
 or of noble and virtuous Princes and governors. 
 So that, next after the honours exhibited to their 
 gods, the Poets, finding in man generally much to 
 reprove and little to praise, made certain poems 
 in plain metres, more like to sermons or preachings 
 than otherwise, and when the people were assem- 
 bled together in those hallowed places dedicate to 
 their gods, because they had yet no large halls or 
 places of conventicle, nor had any other correction 
 of their faults, but such as rested only in rebukes 
 of wise and grave men, such as at these days make 
 the people ashamed rather than afeared, the said 
 ancient Poets used for that purpose, three kinds of 
 poems reprehensive, to wit : the Satire, the 
 Comedy, and the Tragedy. 
 
 The first and most bitter invective against vice 
 and vicious men was the Satire, which, to the
 
 156 George Puttenham 
 
 intent their bitterness should breed none ill will, 
 either to the Poets or to the reciters (which could 
 not have been chosen if they had been openly 
 known), and besides to make their admonitions 
 and reproofs seem graver and of more efficacy, 
 they made wise as if the gods of the woods, whom 
 they called Satyres or Silvans, should appear and 
 recite those verses of rebuke, whereas indeed they 
 were but disguised persons under the shape of 
 Satyrs, as who would say, these terrene and base 
 gods being conversant with man's affairs, and 
 spiers out of all their secret faults, had some great 
 care over man and desired by good admonitions 
 to reform the evil of their life, and to bring the 
 bad to amendment by those kind of preachings, 
 whereupon the Poets, inventors of the devise, 
 were called Satirists 21 . 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HOW VICE WAS AFTERWARD REPROVED BY 
 TWO OTHER MANNER OF POEMS, BETTER 
 REFORMED THAN THE SATIRE, WHEREOF THE 
 FIRST WAS COMEDY, THE SECOND TRAGEDY. 
 
 BUT when these manner of solitary speeches and 
 recitals of rebuke, uttered by the rural gods out of 
 bushes and briars, seemed not to the finer heads 
 
 21 The Roman satire was connected with the satura 
 lanx, or full dish, in the sense of a ' pot-pourri '. Putten- 
 ham's critical historizing in these chapters is more popular 
 than exact.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 157 
 
 sufficiently persuasive, nor so popular as if it were 
 reduced into action of many persons, or by many 
 voices lively represented to the ear and eye, so 
 that a man might think it were even now a-doing, 
 the Poets devised to have many parts played at 
 once by two or three or four persons that debated 
 the matters of the world ; sometimes of their own 
 private affairs, sometimes of their neighbours', but 
 never meddling with any Prince's matters nor such 
 high personages, but commonly of merchants, 
 soldiers, artificers, good honest householders, and 
 also of unthrifty youths, young damsels, old 
 nurses, bawds, brokers, ruffians and parasites, 
 with such like, in whose behaviours, lieth in effect 
 the whole course and trade of man's life, and 
 therefore tended altogether to the good amend- 
 ment of man by discipline and example. It was 
 also much for the solace and recreation of the 
 common people by reason of the pageants and 
 shows. 
 
 And this kind of poem was called Comedy, and 
 followed next after the Satire, and by that occasion 
 was somewhat sharp and bitter after the nature 
 of the Satire, openly and by express names taxing 
 men more maliciously and impudently than 
 became, so that they were enforced for fear of 
 quarrel and blame to disguise their players with 
 strange apparel, and by colouring their faces and 
 carrying hats and caps of divers fashions to make 
 themselves less known. But as time and experi- 
 ence do reform every thing that is amiss, so this 
 bitter poem called the old Comedy, being disused 
 and taken away, the new Comedy came in place, 
 more civil and pleasant a great deal, and not
 
 George Puttenham 
 
 touching any man by name, but in a certain 
 generality glancing at every abuse, so that from 
 thenceforth fearing none ill-will or enmity at any- 
 body's hands they lift aside their disguisings and 
 played bare-face, till one Roscius Gallus 22 , the 
 most excellent player among the Romans, brought 
 up these vizards which we see at this day used, 
 partly to supply the want of players, when there 
 were more parts than there were persons, or that 
 it was not thought meet to trouble and pester 
 princes' chambers with too many folks. Now 
 by the change of a vizard one man might play the 
 king and the carter, the old nurse and the young 
 damsel, the merchant and the soldier or any other 
 part he listed very conveniently. There be that 
 say Roscius did it for another purpose, for being 
 himself the best Histrion or buffoon that was in his 
 days to be found, insomuch as Cicero said Roscius 
 contended with him by variety of lively gestures 
 to surmount the copy of his speech, yet because he 
 was squint-eyed and had a very unpleasant coun- 
 tenance, and looks which made him ridiculous or 
 rather odious to the presence, he devised these 
 vizards to hide his own ill-favoured face. And 
 thus much touching the Comedy. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY THE EVIL AND OUTRAGE- 
 OUS BEHAVIOURS OF PRINCES WERE REPREHENDED. 
 
 BUT because in those days when the Poets first 
 taxed by Satire and Comedy, there was no great 
 
 22 Quintus Roscius, the Roman actor, died about 62 B.C.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 159 
 
 store of Kings or Emperors or such high estates 
 (all men being yet for the most part rude, and in a 
 manner popularly equal) they could not say of 
 them or of their behaviours anything to the 
 purpose, which cases of Princes are sithens taken 
 for the highest and greatest matters of all. But 
 after that some men among the more became 
 mighty and famous in the world, sovereignty and 
 dominion having learned them all manner of lusts 
 and licentiousness of life, by which occasions also 
 their high estates and felicities fell many times into 
 most low and lamentable fortunes ; whereas before 
 in their great prosperities they were both feared 
 and reverenced in the highest degree, after their 
 deaths when the posterity stood no more in dread 
 of them, their infamous life and tyrannies were 
 laid open to all the world, their wickedness 
 reproached, their follies and extreme insolences 
 derided, and their miserable ends painted out in 
 plays and pageants, to show the mutability of 
 fortune, and the just punishment of God in revenge 
 of a vicious and evil life. 
 
 These matters were also handled by the Poets, 
 and represented by action as that of the Comedies : 
 but because the matter was higher than that of 
 the Comedies the Poet's style was also higher and 
 more lofty, the provision greater, the place more 
 magnificent : for which purpose also the players' 
 garments were made more rich and costly and 
 solemn, and every other thing appertaining, 
 according to that rate. So that, where the 
 Satire was pronounced by rustical and naked 
 Sylvans, speaking out of a bush, and the common 
 players of interludes, called Plampedes, played
 
 160 George Puttenham 
 
 barefoot upon the floor, the later Comedies upon 
 scaffolds, and by men well and cleanly hosed and 
 shod, these matters of great Princes were played 
 upon lofty stages, and the actors thereof wore upon 
 their legs buskins of leather, called Cothurni, and 
 other solemn habits, and for a special pre-eminence 
 did walk upon those high corked shoes or pantofles, 
 which now they call in Spain and Italy Shoppini. 
 And because those buskins and high shoes were 
 commonly made of goats' skins very finely tanned 
 and dyed into colours, or for that, as some say, the 
 best player's reward was a goat to be given him, or 
 for that, as others think, a goat was the peculiar 
 sacrifice of the god Pan, king of all the gods of the 
 woods, forasmuch as a goat in Greek is called 
 Tragos, therefore these stately plays were called 
 Tragedies. 
 
 And thus have ye four sundry forms of Poesy 
 Dramatic reprehensive, and put in execution by 
 the feat and dexterity of man's body, to wit : 
 the Satire, old Comedy, new Comedy, and Tragedy, 
 whereas all other kinds of poems except Eclogue, 
 whereof shall be entreated hereafter, were only 
 recited by mouth or sung with the voice to some 
 melodious instrument. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY THE GREAT PRINCES AND 
 DOMINATORS OF THE WORLD WERE HONOURED. 
 
 BUT as tlxe bad and illaudable parts of all estates 
 and degrees were taxed by the Poets in one sort
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 161 
 
 or another, and those of great Princes by Tragedy 
 in especial and not till after their deaths, as hath 
 been before remembered, to the intent that such 
 exemplifying (as it were) of their blames and 
 adversities, being now dead, might work for a 
 secret reprehension to others that were alive, 
 living in the same or like abuses so was it great 
 reason that all good and virtuous persons should 
 for their well-doings be rewarded with commenda- 
 tion, and the great Princes above all others with 
 honours and praises, being for many respects of 
 greater moment to have them good and virtuous 
 than any inferior sort of men. Wherefore the 
 Poets being indeed the trumpeters of all praise and 
 also of slander (not slander, but well deserved 
 reproach) were in conscience and credit bound, 
 next after the divine praises of the immortal gods, 
 to yield a like ratable honour to all such amongst 
 men as most resembled the gods by excellency of 
 function, and had a certain affinity with them, 
 by more than human and ordinary virtues shown 
 in their actions here upon earth. 
 
 They were therefore praised by a second degree 
 of laud : showing their high estates, their Princely 
 genealogies and pedigrees, marriages, alliances, 
 and such noble exploits as they had done in the 
 affairs of peace and of war to the benefit of their 
 people and countries, by invention of any noble 
 science or profitable Art, or by making wholesome 
 laws, or enlarging of their dominions by honourable 
 and just conquests, and many other ways. 
 
 Such personages among the Gentiles were 
 Bacchus, Ceres, Perseus, Hercules, Theseus and 
 many other, who thereby came to be accounted 
 
 E.L. L
 
 162 George Puttenham 
 
 gods and half-gods or goddesses, and had their 
 commendations given by Hymn accordingly or by 
 such other poems as their memory was thereby 
 made famous to the posterity for ever after, as 
 shall be more at large said in place convenient. 
 But first we will speak somewhat of the playing 
 places and provisions which were made for their 
 pageants and pomps representative before re- 
 membered. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 OF THE PLACES WHERE THEIR INTERLUDES OR 
 POEMS DRAMATIC WERE REPRESENTED TO 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 As it hath been declared, the Satires were first 
 uttered in their hallowed places within the woods 
 where they honoured their gods under the open 
 heaven, because they had no other housing fit for 
 great assemblies. The old comedies were played in 
 the broad streets upon wagons or carts uncovered, 
 which carts were floored with boards and made 
 for removable stages to pass from one street of 
 their towns to another, where all the people might 
 stand at their ease to gaze upon the sights. Their 
 new comedies or civil interludes were played in 
 open pavilions or tents of linen-cloth or leather, 
 half displayed, that the people might see. 
 
 Afterward, when Tragedies came up, they 
 devised to present them upon scaffolds or stages 
 of timber, shadowed with linen or leather as the
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 163 
 
 other, and these stages were made in the form of 
 a Semicircle, whereof the bow served for the 
 beholders to sit in and the string or forepart was 
 appointed for the floor or place where the players 
 uttered, and had in it sundry little divisions by 
 curtains as traverses to serve for several rooms 
 where they might repair unto and change their 
 garments and come in again, as their speeches and 
 parts were to be renewed. Also there was place 
 appointed for musicians to sing or to play upon 
 their instruments at the end of every scene, to the 
 intent the people might be refreshed, and kept 
 occupied. 
 
 This manner of stage in half-circle the Greeks 
 called theatrum, as much to say as a beholding- 
 place, which was also in such sort contrived by 
 benches and greeces 23 to stand or sit upon, as no 
 man should impeach another's sight. But as 
 civility and withal wealth increased so did the 
 mind of man grow daily more haughty and super- 
 fluous in all his devices, so that for their theatres 
 in half-circle they came to be by the great magnifi- 
 cence of the Roman princes and people sumptuously 
 built with marble and square stone in form all 
 round, and were called Amphitheatres, whereof 
 as yet appears one among the ancient ruins of 
 Rome, built by Pompeius Magnus, for capacity 
 able to receive at ease fourscore thousand persons, 
 as it is left written, and so curiously contrived as 
 every man might depart at his pleasure, without 
 any annoyance to other. It is also to be known 
 that in those great Amphitheatres were exhibited 
 
 23 Greece, or grice (Latin, gressus) a flight of steps.
 
 164 George Puttenham 
 
 all manner of other shows and disports for the 
 people, as their fence-plays, or digladiations of 
 naked men, their wrestlings, runnings, leapings 
 and other practices of activity and strength, also 
 their baitings of wild beasts, as Elephants, Rhi- 
 noceros, Tigers, Leopards and others, which sights 
 much delighted the common people, and therefore 
 the places required to be large and of great content. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 OF THE SHEPHERDS' OR PASTORAL POESY CALLED 
 ECLOGUE, AND TO WHAT PURPOSE IT WAS 
 FIRST INVENTED AND USED. 
 
 SOME be of opinion, and the chief of those who have 
 written in this art among the Latins, that the 
 pastoral Poesy which we commonly call by the 
 name of Eclogue and Bucolic, a term brought in 
 by the Sicilian Poets, should be the first of any 
 other, and before the satire, comedy or tragedy, 
 because, say they, the shepherds' and haywards' 
 assemblies and meetings, when they kept their 
 cattle and herds in the common fields and forests, 
 was the first familiar conversation ; and their 
 babble and talk under bushes and shady trees the 
 first disputation and contentious reasoning ; and 
 their fleshly heats, growing of ease, the first idle 
 wooings ; and their songs, made to their mates 
 or paramours either upon sorrow or jollity of 
 courage, the first amorous musics. Sometimes 
 also they sang and played on their pipes for wagers,
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 165 
 
 striving who should get the best game and be 
 counted cunningest. 
 
 All this I do agree unto, for no doubt the shep- 
 herds' life was the first example of honest fellow- 
 ship, their trade the first art of lawful acquisition 
 or purchase, for at these days robbery was a 
 manner of purchase. So saith Aristotle in his 
 books of the Politics, and that pasturage was 
 before tillage, or fishing, or fowling, or any other 
 predatory art or chevisance. And all this may 
 be true, for before there was a shepherd keeper of 
 his own or of some other body's flock there was 
 none owner in the world, quick cattle being the 
 first property of any foreign possession. I say 
 foreign because alway men claimed property in 
 their apparel, and armour, and other like things 
 made by their own travail and industry, nor there- 
 by was there yet any good town or city or King's 
 palace, where pageants and pomps might be 
 shown by Comedies or Tragedies. 
 
 But for all this, I do deny that the Eclogue should 
 be the first and most ancient form of artificial 
 Poesy, being persuaded that the Poet devised the 
 Eclogue long after the other dramatic poems, not 
 of purpose to counterfeit or represent the rustical 
 manner of loves and communication, but under 
 the veil of homely persons and in rude speeches 
 to insinuate and glance at greater matters, and 
 such as perchance had not been safe to have been 
 disclosed in any other sort, which may be per- 
 ceived by the Eclogues of Virgil, in which are 
 treated by figure matters of greater importance 
 than the loves of Tityrus and Corydon. These 
 Eclogues came after to contain and inform moral
 
 1 66 George Puttenham 
 
 discipline, for the amendment of man's behaviour, 
 as be those of Mantuan and other modern Poets. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 OF HISTORICAL POESY, BY WHICH THE FAMOUS 
 ACTS OF PRINCES AND THE VIRTUOUS AND 
 WORTHY LIVES OF OUR FOREFATHERS WERE 
 REPORTED. 
 
 THERE is nothing in man of all the potential parts 
 of his mind (reason and will except) more noble or 
 more necessary to the active life than memory : 
 because it maketh most to a sound judgment and 
 perfect worldly wisdom, examining and comparing 
 the times past with the present, and, by them both 
 considering the time to come, concludeth with a 
 steadfast resolution what is the best course to be 
 taken in all his actions and advices in this world. 
 It came upon this reason experience to be so highly 
 commended in all consultations of importance, and 
 preferred before any learning or science, and yet 
 experience is no more than a mass of memories 
 assembled, that is, such trials as man hath made 
 in time before. Right so no kind of argument in 
 all the Oratory craft doth better persuade and 
 more universally satisfy than example, which is 
 but the representation of old memories, and like 
 successes happened in times past. 
 
 For these regards the Poesy historical is of all 
 other next the divine most honourable and worthy, 
 as well for the common benefit as for the special
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 167 
 
 comfort every man receiveth by it. No one thing 
 in the world with more delectation reviving our 
 spirits than to behold as it were in a glass the lively 
 image of our dear forefathers, their noble and 
 virtuous manner of life, with other things authen- 
 tic, which because we are not able otherwise to 
 attain to the knowledge of by any of our senses, 
 we apprehend them by memory, whereas the 
 present time and things so swiftly pass away that 
 they give us no leisure almost to look into them, 
 and much less to know and consider of them 
 thoroughly. The things future, being also events 
 very uncertain, and such as cannot possibly be 
 known because they be not yet, cannot be used for 
 example nor for delight otherwise than by hope. 
 Though many promise the contrary, by vain and 
 deceitful arts taking upon them to reveal the truth 
 of accidents to come, which if it were so as they 
 surmise, are yet but sciences merely conjectural, 
 and not of any benefit to man or to the common 
 wealth, where they be used or professed. 
 
 Therefore the good and exemplary things and 
 actions of the former ages, were reserved only to 
 the historical reports of wise and grave men : 
 those of the present time left to the fruition and 
 judgment of our senses : the future as hazards 
 and uncertain events utterly neglected and laid 
 aside for Magicians and mockers to get their 
 livings by : such manner of men as by negligence 
 of Magistrates and remissness of laws every country 
 breedeth great store of. These historical men 
 nevertheless used not the matter so precisely to 
 wish that all they wrote should be accounted true, 
 for that was not needful nor expedient to the
 
 1 68 George Puttenham 
 
 purpose, namely to be used either for example or 
 for pleasure : considering that many times it is 
 seen a feigned matter or altogether fabulous, 
 besides that it maketh more mirth than any other, 
 works no less good conclusions for example than 
 the most true and veritable, but oftentimes more, 
 because the Poet hath the handling of them to 
 fashion at his pleasure, but not so of the other 
 which must go according to their verity and none 
 otherwise without the writer's great blame. 
 
 Again, as ye know, more and more excellent 
 examples may be feigned in one day by a good wit 
 than many ages through man's frailty are able to 
 put in use, which made the learned and witty men 
 of those times to devise many historical matters 
 of no verity at all, but with purpose to do good and 
 no hurt, as using them for a manner of discipline 
 and precedent of commendable life. Such was 
 the Commonwealth of Plato, and Sir Thomas 
 More's Utopia, resting all in device, but never put 
 in execution, and easier to be wished than to be 
 performed. 
 
 And you shall perceive that histories were of 
 three sorts, wholly true and wholly false, and a 
 third holding part of either, but for honest recre- 
 ation and good example they were all of them. 
 And this may be apparent to us not only by the 
 Poetical histories but also by those that be written 
 in prose : for as Homer wrote a fabulous or mixed 
 report of the siege of Troy, and another of Ulysses' 
 errors or wanderings, so did Musaeus compile a 
 true treatise of the life and loves of Leander and 
 Hero, both of them heroic, and to none ill edifica- 
 tion. Also, as Thucydides wrote a worthy and
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 169 
 
 veritable history of the wars betwixt the Athenians 
 and the Peloponeses, so did Xenophon, a most 
 grave Philosopher, and well trained courtier and 
 counsellor, make another (but feigned and untrue) 
 of the childhood of Cyrus king of Persia, never- 
 theless both to one effect, that is for example and 
 good information of the posterity. 
 
 Now, because the actions of mean and base 
 personages tend in very few cases to any great 
 good example for who passeth to follow the 
 steps and manner of life of a craftsman, shepherd 
 or sailor, though he were his father or dearest 
 friend ; yea, how almost is it possible that such 
 manner of men should be of any virtue other than 
 their profession requireth ? therefore was nothing 
 committed to history but matters of great and 
 excellent persons and things, that the same by 
 irritation of good courages (such as emulation 
 causeth) might work more effectually, which 
 occasioned the story-writer to choose a higher 
 style fit for his subject the Prosaic in prose, the 
 Poet in metre and the Poet's was by verse- 
 hexameter for its gravity and stateliness most 
 allowable 24 . Neither would they intermingle it 
 
 24 This passage is particularly interesting, the more so 
 as there was at this time practically no English history. 
 The contention that the ' actions of mean and base 
 personages ' (in the social sense) ' tend in very few 
 cases to any great good example ', and the doubt expressed 
 if ' such manner of men should be of any virtue other 
 than their profession requireth ', are fallacies inherent 
 in the age in which Puttenham was writing. The middle- 
 class had only recently been added to the serious factors 
 of social life, and the so-called lower-class (the ' masses ', 
 as distinguished by Gladstone from the ' classes ' ) were 
 not definitely reckoned with till after the French Revolu-
 
 170 George Puttenham 
 
 with any other shorter measure, unless it were in 
 matters of such quality as became best to be sung 
 with the voice, and to some musical instrument, 
 as were with the Greeks all your Hymns and 
 Encomia of Pindar and Callimachus, not very 
 histories but a manner of historical reports, in 
 which cases they made those poems in variable 
 measures, and coupled a short verse with a long 
 to serve that purpose the better. And we our- 
 selves who compiled this treatise have written for 
 pleasure a little brief Romance or historical ditty 
 in the English tongue of the Isle of great Britain 
 in short and long metres, and by breaches or 
 divisions to be more commodiously sung to the 
 harp in places of assembly, where the company 
 shall be desirous to hear of old adventures and 
 valiances of noble knights in times past, as are 
 those of king Arthur and his knights of the round 
 table, Sir Bevys of Southampton, Guy of Warwick 
 and others like. Such as have not premonition 
 hereof and consideration of the causes alleged 
 would peradventure reprove and disgrace every 
 Romance, or short historical ditty, for that they be 
 not written in long metres or verses Alexandrines, 
 according to the nature and style of large histories, 
 wherein they should do wrong, for they be sundry 
 forms of poems and not all one. 
 
 tion had democratized society. Greek and Roman 
 society, being built on a foundation of slave-labour, it 
 was inevitable that ancient history should take account 
 of none but ' great and excellent persons and things '. 
 Industrial and economic conditions were excluded, ex 
 hypothesi, from its survey. The relation of subject to 
 form, as discussed below, is reasonably accurate. The 
 ' author's historical ditty ' has not survived.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 171 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY VIRTUE IN THE INFERIOR 
 SORT WAS COMMENDED. 
 
 IN every degree and sort of men virtue is com- 
 mendable, but not equally : not only because 
 men's estates are unequal, but for that also virtue 
 itself is not in every respect of equal value and 
 estimation. For continence in a king is of greater 
 merit than in a carter, the one having all oppor- 
 tunities to allure him to lusts, and ability to serve 
 his appetites, the other partly for the baseness of 
 his estate wanting such means and occasions, 
 partly by dread of laws more inhibited, and not so 
 vehemently carried away with unbridled affections, 
 and therefore deserve not in the one and the other 
 like praise nor equal reward, by the very ordinary 
 course of distributive justice. 
 
 Even so parsimony and illiberality are greater 
 vices in a Prince than in a private person, and 
 pusillanimity and injustice likewise : for to the 
 one fortune hath supplied enough to maintain 
 them in the contrary virtues I mean fortitude, 
 justice, liberality and magnanimity, the Prince 
 having all plenty to use largess by, and no want or 
 need to drive him to do wrong ; also, all the aids 
 that may be to lift up his courage and to make 
 him stout and fearless ; augent animos fortunce, 
 saith the Mimist, and very truly, for nothing 
 pulleth down a man's heart so much as adversity 
 and lack. Again, in a mean man, prodigality and 
 pride are faults more reprehensible than in Princes,
 
 172 George Puttenham 
 
 whose high estates do require in their countenance, 
 speech and expense a certain extraordinary, and 
 their functions enforce them sometimes to exceed 
 the limits of mediocrity not excusable in a private 
 person, whose manner of life and calling hath no 
 such exigence. Besides the good and bad of 
 Princes is more exemplary, and thereby of greater 
 moment than the private persons'. 
 
 Therefore it is that the inferior persons with 
 their inferior virtues have a certain inferior praise, 
 to guerdon their good with, and to comfort them 
 to continue a laudable course in the modest and 
 honest life and behaviour. But this lieth not in 
 written lauds so much as ordinary reward and 
 commendation to be given them by the mouth of 
 the superior magistrate. For histories were not 
 intended to so general and base a purpose, albeit 
 many a mean soldier and other obscure persons 
 were spoken of and made famous in stories, as we 
 find of Irus the beggar, and Thersites the glorious 
 noddy, whom Homer maketh mention of. But 
 that happened (and so did many like memories of 
 mean men) by reason of some greater personage or 
 matter that it was along of, which therefore could 
 not be an universal case nor chance to every other 
 good and virtuous person of the meaner sort. 
 Wherefore the Poet, in praising the manner of life 
 or death of any mean person, did it by some little 
 ditty, or Epigram, or Epitaph, in few verses and 
 mean style conformable to his subject. 
 
 So have you how the immortal gods were 
 praised by hymns, the great Princes and heroic 
 personages by ballads of praise called Encomia, 
 both of them by historical reports of great gravity
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 173 
 
 and majesty, the inferior persons by other slight 
 poems. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE FORM WHEREIN HONEST AND PROFITABLE ARTS 
 AND SCIENCES WERE TREATED. 
 
 THE profitable sciences were no less meet to be 
 imported to the greater number of civil men for 
 instruction of the people and increase of know- 
 ledge than to be reserved and kept for clerks and 
 great men only. So as next unto the things 
 historical such doctrines and arts as the common- 
 wealth fared the better by were esteemed and 
 allowed. And the same were treated by Poets 
 in verse-hexameter favouring the Heroical, and 
 for the gravity and comeliness of the metre most 
 used with the Greeks and Latins to sad purposes. 
 Such were the Philosophical works of Lucretius 
 Carus among the Romans, the Astronomical of 
 Aratus and Manilius, one Greek, the other Latin, 
 the Medicinal of Nicander, and that of Oprianus 
 of hunting and fishes, and many more that were 
 too long to recite in this place. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 IN WHAT FORM OF POESY THE AMOROUS AFFECTIONS 
 AND ALLUREMENTS WERE UTTERED. 
 
 THE first founder of all good affections is honest 
 love, as the mother of all the vicious is hatred.
 
 174 George Puttenham 
 
 It was not therefore without reason that so 
 commendable, yea honourable, a thing as love 
 well meant, were it in Princely estate or private, 
 might in all civil commonwealths be uttered 
 in good form and order as other laudable things 
 are. And because love is of all other human affec- 
 tions the most puissant and passionate, and most 
 general to all sorts and ages of men and women, 
 so that whether it be of the young or old or wise 
 or holy, or high estate or low, none ever could 
 truly brag of any exemption in that case it requir- 
 eth a form of Poesy variable, inconstant, affected, 
 curious and most witty of any others, whereof 
 the joys were to be uttered in one sort, the sorrows 
 in another, and by the many forms of Poesy the 
 many moods and pangs of lovers thoroughly to 
 be discovered : the poor souls, sometimes praying, 
 beseeching, sometimes honouring, advancing, prais- 
 ing ; another while railing, reviling, and cursing ; 
 then sorrowing, weeping, lamenting ; in the end 
 laughing, rejoicing, and solacing the beloved 
 again with a thousand delicate devices, odes, 
 songs, elegies, ballads, sonnets and other ditties, 
 moving one way and another to great compassion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE FORM OF POETICAL REJOICINGS. 
 
 PLEASURE is the chief part of man's felicity in 
 this world, and also (as our Theologians say) in 
 the world to come. Therefore while we may 
 (yea, always, if it could be) to rejoice and take
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 175 
 
 our pleasures in virtuous and honest sort, it is 
 not only allowable, but also necessary and very 
 natural to man. And many be the joys and 
 consolations of the heart ; but none greater than 
 such as he may utter and discover by some con- 
 venient means ; even as to suppress and hide a 
 man's mirth, and not to have therein a partaker, 
 or at least wise a witness, is no little grief and 
 infelicity. 
 
 Therefore nature and civility have ordained 
 (besides the private solaces) public rejoicings for 
 the comfort and recreation of many. And they 
 be of divers sorts and upon divers occasions 
 grown. One and the chief was for the public 
 peace of a country, the greatest of any other 
 civil good, and wherein your Majesty (my most 
 gracious Sovereign) have shown yourself to all 
 the world for this one and thirty years' space of 
 your glorious reign, above all other Princes of 
 Christendom, not only fortunate but also most 
 sufficient virtuous and worthy of Empire. Another 
 is for just and honourable victory achieved against 
 the foreign enemy. A third at solemn feasts and 
 pomps of coronations and instalments of hon- 
 ourable orders. Another for jollity at weddings 
 and marriages. Another at the births of Princes' 
 children. Another for private entertainments 
 in Court, or other secret disports in chamber, and 
 such solitary places. 
 
 And as these rejoicings tend to divers effects, 
 so do they also carry divers forms and nominations. 
 For those of victory and peace are called Triumphal, 
 whereof we ourselves have heretofore given some 
 example by our Triumphals written in honour
 
 176 George Puttenham 
 
 of her Majesty's long peace. And they were 
 used by the ancients in like manner as we do our 
 general processions or Litanies with banquets 
 and bonfires and all manner of joys. Those that 
 were to honour the persons of great Princes or 
 to solemnize the pomps of any instalment were 
 called Encomia, we may call them carols of honour. 
 Those to celebrate marriages were called songs 
 nuptial or E-pithalamies, but in a certain mystical 
 sense as shall be said hereafter. Others for 
 magnificence at the nativities of Princes' children, 
 or by custom used yearly upon the same days, 
 are called songs natal or Genethliaca. Others 
 for secret recreation and pastime in chambers 
 with company or alone were the ordinary Musics 
 amorous, such as might be sung with voice or to 
 the Lute, Citheron, or Harp, or danced by measures 
 as the Italian Pavan and galliard are at these 
 days in Princes' Courts and other places of honour- 
 able or civil assembly, and of all these we will speak 
 in order and very briefly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE FORM OF POETICAL LAMENTATIONS. 
 
 LAMENTING is altogether contrary to rejoicing. 
 Every man saith so, and yet is it a piece of joy 
 to be able to lament with ease, and freely to pour 
 forth a man's inward sorrows and the griefs 
 wherewith his mind is surcharged. 
 
 This was a very necessary devise of the Poet 
 and a fine besides his poetry to play also the
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 177 
 
 Physician, and not only by applying a medicine 
 to the ordinary sickness of mankind, but by 
 making the very grief itself (in part) cure of the 
 disease. Now are the causes of man's sorrows 
 many : the death of his parents, friends, allies, 
 and children (though many of the barbarous 
 nations do rejoice at their burials and sorrow at 
 their births) ; the overthrows and discomforts 
 in battle ; the subversions of towns and cities ; 
 the desolations of countries ; the loss of goods 
 and worldly promotions, honour and good renown ; 
 finally, the travails and torments of love forlorn 
 or ill-bestowed, either by disgrace, denial, delay, 
 and twenty other ways, that well experienced 
 lovers could recite. 
 
 Such of these griefs as might be refrained or 
 holpen by wisdom and the parties' own good 
 endeavour, the Poet gave none order to sorrow 
 them. For first, as to the good renown : it is lost, 
 for the more part, by some default of the owner, 
 and may be by his well doings recovered again. 
 And if it be unjustly taken away, as by untrue 
 and famous libels, the offender's recantation may 
 suffice for his amends. So did the Poet Stesichorus, 
 as it is written of him in his Palinode upon the 
 dispraise of Helena, and recovered his eyesight. 
 Also for worldly goods they come and go, as 
 things not long proprietary to anybody, and are 
 not yet subject unto fortune's dominion so, but 
 that we ourselves are in great part accessory to 
 our own losses and hindrances, by oversight 
 and misguiding of ourselves and our things ; 
 therefore why should we bewail our such voluntary 
 detriment ? 
 
 E.L, M
 
 178 George Puttenham 
 
 But death the irrecoverable loss, death the 
 doleful departure of friends that can never be 
 recontinued by any other meeting or new acquaint- 
 ance. Besides, our uncertainty and suspicion 
 of their estates and welfare in the places of their 
 new abode seemeth to carry a reasonable pretext 
 of just sorrow. Likewise the great overthrows 
 in battle and desolations of countries by wars, 
 as well for the loss of many lives and much liberty 
 as for that it toucheth the whole state and every 
 private man hath his portion in the damage. 
 Finally for love, there is no frailty in flesh and 
 blood so excusable as it, no comfort or discomfort 
 greater than the good and bad success thereof, 
 nothing more natural to man, nothing of more 
 force to vanquish his will and to inveigle his 
 judgment. Therefore of death and burials, of the 
 adversities by wars, and of true love lost or ill 
 bestowed, are the only sorrows that the noble 
 Poets sought by their art to remove or appease, 
 not with any medicament of a contrary temper, 
 as the Galenists use to cure (contraria contrariis), 
 but as the Paracelsians, who cure similia similibus 
 making one dolour to expel another, and in this 
 case, one short sorrowing the remedy of a long 
 and grievous sorrow. 
 
 And the lamenting of deaths was chiefly at 
 the very burials of the dead, also at months minds 25 
 and longer times, by custom continued yearly, 
 whenas they used many offices of service and love 
 
 28 Months-mind = monthly commemoration of the 
 departed ; ' to have a months-mind ' meant to have a 
 strong inclination. Strikings, below, = screechings.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 179 
 
 towards the dead, and thereupon are called 
 Obsequies in our vulgar. Which was done not only 
 by cladding the mourners, their friends and 
 servants in black vestures, of shape doleful and 
 sad, but also by woful countenances and voices, 
 and besides by Poetical mournings in verse. Such 
 funeral songs were called Epicedia if they were 
 sung by many, and Monodia if they were uttered 
 by one alone, and this was used at the interment 
 of Princes and others of great account, and it was 
 reckoned a great civility to use such ceremonies, 
 as at this day is also in some country used. In 
 Rome they accustomed to make orations funeral 
 and commendatory of the dead parties in the 
 public place called Procostris ; and our Theologians, 
 instead thereof, use to make sermons, both teaching 
 the people some good learning and also saying 
 well of the departed. 
 
 Those songs of the dolorous discomforts in battle 
 and other desolations in war, or of towns sackaged 
 and subverted, were sung by the remnant of the 
 army overthrown, with great skrikings and out- 
 cries, holding the wrong end of their weapon 
 upwards in sign of sorrow and despair. The 
 cities also made general mournings and offered 
 sacrifices with Poetical songs to appease the 
 wrath of the martial gods and goddesses. 
 
 The third sorrowing was of loves, by long 
 lamentation in Elegie. So was their song called, 
 and it was in a piteous manner of metre, placing 
 a limping Pentameter after a lusty Hexameter, 
 which made it go dolorously more than any other 
 metre.
 
 r8o George Puttenham 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 OF THE SOLEMN REJOICINGS AT THE NATIVITY OF 
 PRINCES' CHILDREN. 
 
 To return from sorrow to rejoicing it is a very 
 good hap and no unwise part for him that can do 
 it. I say, therefore, that the comfort of children 
 is so natural and so great, not only to all men 
 but specially to Princes, that duty and civility 
 have made it a common custom to rejoice at the 
 birth of their noble children, and to keep those 
 days hallowed and festival for ever once in the 
 year, during the parents' or children's lives ; 
 and that by public order and consent. Of which 
 rejoicings and mirths the Poet ministered the 
 first occasion honourable, by presenting of joyful 
 songs and ballads, praising the parents by proof, 
 the child by hope, the whole kindred by report, 
 and the day itself with wishes of all good success, 
 long life, health and prosperity for ever to the 
 new-born. These poems were called in Greek 
 Genethliaca ; with us they may be called natal 
 or birth-songs. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE MANNER OF REJOICINGS AT MARRIAGES AND 
 WEDDINGS. 
 
 As the consolation of children well-begotten 
 is great, no less but rather greater ought to be that 
 which is occasion of children, that is honourable
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 181 
 
 matrimony, a love by all laws allowed, not mutable 
 nor encumbered with such vain cares and passions 
 as that other love, whereof there is no assurance 
 but loose and fickle affection occas ; oned for the 
 most part by sudden sights and acquaintance 
 of no long trial or experience, nor upon any other 
 good ground wherein any surety may be con- 
 ceived. Wherefore the Civil Poet could do no 
 less in conscience and credit than, as he had 
 before done to the ballad of birth, now with much 
 better devotion, to celebrate by his poem the 
 cheerful day of marriages as well Princely as 
 others. 
 
 For that hath always been accounted with every 
 country and nation of never so barbarous people 
 the highest and holiest of any ceremony apper- 
 taining to man ; a match forsooth made for ever 
 and not for a day, a solace provided for youth, a 
 comfort for age, a knot of alliance and amity in- 
 dissoluble. Great rejoicing was therefore due 
 to such a matter and to so gladsome a time. 
 
 This was done in ballad-wise as the natal song, 
 and was sung very sweetly by Musicians at the 
 chamber-door of the Bridegroom and Bride, 
 and they were called Epithalamies as much to say 
 as ballads at the bridal couch. For such as were 
 sung at the board at dinner or supper were other 
 Musics and not properly Epithalamies.
 
 1 82 George Puttenham 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE MANNER OF POESY BY WHICH THEY UTTERED 
 THEIR BITTER TAUNTS AND PRIVY NIPS, OR 
 WITTY SCOFFS AND OTHER MERRY CONCEITS. 
 
 BUT all the world could not keep, nor any civil 
 ordinance to the contrary so prevail, but that men 
 would and must needs utter their spleens in all 
 ordinary matters also. Therefore the poet devised 
 a pretty-fashioned poem short and sweet (as we 
 are wont to say) and called it Epigramma, in 
 which every merry-conceited man might without 
 any long study or tedious ambage make his friend 
 sport, and anger his foe, and give a pretty nip, or 
 show a sharp conceit in few verses. 
 
 For this Epigram is but an inscription or writing 
 made as it were upon a table, or in a window, 
 or upon the wall or mantel of a chimney in some 
 place of common resort 26 , where it was allowed 
 every man might come, or be fitting to chat and 
 prate, as now in our taverns and common tabling- 
 houses, where many merry heads meet and scribble 
 with ink, with chalk, or with a coal, such matters 
 as they would every man should know and descant 
 upon. Afterward the same came to be put in 
 paper and in books, and used as ordinary missives, 
 some of friendship, some of defiance, or as other 
 messages of mirth. 
 
 26 The walls of ancient cities were scribbled over with 
 epigrams of this kind, which took the place to some 
 extent of modern hoardings and posters. At Pompeii 
 some of these inscriptions can still be deciphered on the 
 walls of the streets and houses.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 183 
 
 Martial was the chief of this skill among the 
 Latins, and at these days the best Epigrams we 
 find and of the sharpest conceit are those that 
 have been gathered among the reliques of the 
 two mute Satires in Rome, Pasquil and Marphorir 
 which in time of Sede vacante when merry-conceited 
 men listed to gibe and jest at the dead Pope or 
 any of his Cardinals, they fastened them upon 
 those Images which now lie in the open streets, 
 and were tolerated, but after that term expired 
 they were inhibited again. These inscriptions or 
 Epigrams at their beginning had no certain author 
 that would avouch them, some for fear of blame, 
 if they were over saucy or sharp, others for modesty 
 of the writer, as was that distich of Virgil which 
 he set upon the palace gate of the emperor Augustus 
 which I will recite for the briefness and quickness 
 of it, and also for another event that fell out 
 upon the matter worthy to be remembered. 
 These were the verses : 
 
 Nocte pluit tota, redeunt spectacula mane 
 Divisum imperium cum love Caesar habet 
 
 which I have thus Englished : 
 
 It rains all night, early the shows return, 
 God and Caesar do reign and rule by turn. 
 
 As much to say, God showeth His power by the 
 night rains, Caesar his magnificence by the 
 pomps of the day. 
 
 These two verses were very well liked, and 
 brought to the Emperor's Majesty, who took great 
 pleasure in them and willed the author should be
 
 184 George Puttenham 
 
 known. A saucy courtier proffered himself to be 
 the man, and had a good reward given him ; for 
 the Emperor himself was not only learned, but 
 of much munificence toward all learned men. 
 Whereupon Virgil, seeing himself by his overmuch 
 modesty defrauded of the reward that an impudent 
 had gotten by abuse of his merit, came the next 
 night, and fastened upon the same place this half- 
 metre, four tunes iterated. Thus : 
 
 Sic vos non vobis 
 Sic vos non vobis 
 Sic vos non vobis 
 Sic vos non vobis 
 
 And there it remained a great while because no 
 man wist what it meant, till Virgil opened the 
 whole fraud by this device. He wrote above 
 the same half -metres this whole verse, hexameter : 
 
 Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores 
 and then finished the four half-metres thus : 
 
 Sic vos non vobis Fertis aratra boves 
 
 Sic vos non vobis Vellera fertis oves 
 
 Sic vos non vobis Mellificatis apes 
 
 Sic vos non vobis Indificatis aves 
 
 and put to his name Publius Virgilius Maro 27 . 
 This matter came by and by to the Emperor's ear, 
 who taking great pleasure in the device called for 
 Virgil, and gave him not only a present reward, 
 
 27 This story is told by Donatus in his Life of Virgil, 
 where the thieving poet is stated to have been Bathyllus, 
 and the date is fixed as 31 B.C., after the Battle of Actium.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 185 
 
 with a good allowance of diet, but also held him 
 for ever after upon larger trial he had made of his 
 learning and virtue in so great reputation that he 
 vouchsafed to give him the name of a friend 
 (amicus) which among the Romans was so great an 
 honour and special favour as all such persons were 
 allowed to the Emperor's table, or to the Senator's 
 who had received them (as friends) and they were 
 the only men that came ordinarily to their boards, 
 and solaced with them in their chambers and 
 gardens when none other could be admitted. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 OF THE POEM CALLED EPITAPH USED FOR MEMORIAL 
 OF THE DEAD. 
 
 AN Epitaph is but a kind of Epigram only applied 
 to the report of the dead person's estate and 
 degree, or of his other good or bad parts, to his 
 commendation or reproach, and is an inscription 
 such as a man may commodiously write or engrave 
 upon a tomb in few verses, pithy, quick and 
 sententious for the passer-by to peruse, and 
 judge upon without any long tarriance. So that 
 if it exceed the measure of an Epigram, it is then 
 (if the verse be correspondent) rather an Elegy 
 than an Epitaph, which error many of these 
 bastard rhymers commit, because they be not 
 learned, nor (as we are wont to say) crafts -masters. 
 For they make long and tedious discourses, and 
 write them in large tables to be hanged up in 
 Churches and chancels over the tombs of great
 
 1 86 George Puttenham 
 
 men and others, which be so exceeding long as one 
 must have half a day's leisure to read one of them, 
 and must be called away before he come half to 
 the end, or else be locked into the Church by the 
 Sexton as I myself was once served reading an 
 Epitaph in a certain Cathedral-Church of England. 
 They be ignorant of poesy that call such long 
 tales by the name of Epitaphs ; they might better 
 call them Elegies, as I said before, and then ought 
 neither to be engraven nor hanged up in tables. 
 I have seen them nevertheless upon many honour- 
 able tombs of these late times erected, which do 
 rather disgrace than honour either the matter or 
 maker. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A CERTAIN ANCIENT FORM OF POESY BY WHICH MEN 
 DID USE TO REPROACH THEIR ENEMIES. 
 
 As friends be a rich and joyful possession, so be 
 foes a continual torment and canker to the mind 
 of man. And yet there is no possible means to 
 avoid this inconvenience for the best of us all 
 and he that thinketh he lives most blameless lives 
 not without enemies, that envy him for his good 
 parts, or hate him for his evil. 
 
 There be wise men, and of them the great 
 learned man Plutarch, took upon them to per- 
 suade the benefit that men receive by their 
 enemies, which, though it may be true in man- 
 ner of paradox, yet I find man's frailty to be 
 naturally such, and always hath been, that he
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 187 
 
 cannot conceive it in his own case, nor show 
 that patience and moderation in such griefs as 
 becometh the man perfect and accomplished in 
 all virtue. But, either in deed or by word, he 
 will seek revenge against them that malice him, 
 or practise his harms, specially such foes as oppose 
 themselves to a man's loves. This made the 
 ancient Poets to invent a means to rid the gall 
 of all such vindictive men, so that they might 
 be a-wrecked of their wrong, and never bely their 
 enemy with slanderous untruths. And this was 
 done by a manner of imprecation, or as we call 
 it by cursing and banning of the parties, and 
 wishing all evil to alight upon them, and though 
 it never the sooner happened, yet was it great 
 easement to the boiling stomach. They were 
 called Dirce, such as Virgil made against Battarus, 
 and Ovid against Ibis. We Christians are for- 
 bidden to use such uncharitable fashions, and 
 willed to refer all our revenges to God alone 28 . 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 OF SHORT EPIGRAMS CALLED POSIES. 
 
 THERE be also other like Epigrams that were sent 
 usually for new year's gifts, or to be printed, or 
 
 28 The pious conclusion to this chapter was particularly 
 inappropriate to the times in which, a few years later, 
 literary squabbling and lampooning were to reach such 
 great dimensions. Thomas Nash ( 1 567-1601 ) was notorious 
 in this respect, and there was almost a duel between 
 Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Oxford, while the 
 Martin Marprelate controversy rained a deluge of pam- 
 phlets, scurrilous and abusive in the extreme.
 
 1 88 George Puttenham 
 
 put upon their banqueting dishes of sugar-plate 
 or of march-panes 29 , and such other dainty meats 
 as by the courtesy and custom every guest might 
 carry from a common feast home with him to 
 his own house, and were made for the nonce. They 
 were called Nenia or apophoreta, and never con- 
 tained above one verse, or two at the most, but 
 the shorter the better. We call them Posies, 
 and do paint them now-a-days upon the back 
 sides of our fruit trenchers of wood, or use them 
 as devices in rings and arms and about such 
 courtly purposes. 
 
 So have we remembered and set forth to your 
 Majesty very briefly all the commended forms 
 of the ancient Poesy, which we in our vulgar 
 makings do imitate and use under these common 
 names : interlude, song, ballad, carol and ditty : 
 borrowing them also from the French allsaving 
 this word (song) which is our natural Saxon 
 English word. The rest, such as time and usurpa- 
 tion by custom have allowed us out of the primitive 
 Greek and Latin, as Comedy, Tragedy, Ode, 
 Epitaph, Elegy, Epigram, and other more. 
 And we have purposely omitted all nice or scholas- 
 tical curiosities not meet for your Majesty's 
 contemplation in this our vulgar art, and what 
 we have written of the ancient forms of Poems 
 we have taken from the best clerks writing in the 
 same art 30 . 
 
 29 Elizabethan dessert delicacies. 
 
 30 We have no knowledge of Queen Elizabeth's attitude 
 towards this treatise which seems to have been addressed 
 to her more personally than to a patron in the conventional 
 sense. Puttenham 'covertly deprecates exact scholar- 
 ship : his summaries in the preceding chapters are popular
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 189 
 
 The part that next followeth, to wit of pro- 
 portion, because the Greeks nor Latins never 
 had it in use nor made any observation no more 
 than we do of their feet, we may truly affirm 
 to have been the first devisers thereof ourselves 
 as avTo&iSaKTot, and not to have borrowed it 
 of any other by learning or imitation, and thereby 
 trusting to be holden the more excusable if anything 
 in this our labours happen either to mislike, or to 
 come short of author's purpose, because commonly 
 the first attempt in any art or engine artificial 
 is amendable, and in time by often experiences 
 reformed. And so no doubt may this devise 
 of ours be by others that shall take the pen in 
 hand after us. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 WHO IN ANY AGE HAVE BEEN THE MOST COMMENDED 
 WRITERS IN OUR ENGLISH POESY, AND THE 
 AUTHOR'S CENSURE GIVEN UPON THEM. 
 
 IT appeareth by sundry records of books both 
 printed and written that many of our countrymen 
 have painfully travailed in this part, of whose 
 works some appear to be but bare translations, 
 other some matters of their own invention and 
 very commendable, whereof some recital shall 
 be made in this place, to the intent chiefly that 
 their names should not be defrauded of such 
 
 in form. The next part, dealing with proportion, is not 
 included in this reprint ; it contained much technical 
 matter somewhat antiquated to-day.
 
 George Puttenham 
 
 honour as seemeth due to them for having by 
 their thankful studies so much beautified our 
 English tongue that at this day it will be found 
 our nation is in nothing inferior to the French 
 or Italian for copy of language, subtlety of device, 
 good method and proportion in any form of 
 poem, but that they may compare with the most, 
 and perchance pass a great many of them. 
 
 And I will not reach above the time of King 
 Edward the Third, and Richard the Second for 
 any that wrote in English metre, because before 
 their times by reason of the late Norman conquest, 
 which had brought into this Realm much alteration 
 both of our language and laws, and therewithal 
 a certain martial barbarousness, whereby the 
 study of all good learning was so much decayed 
 that long time after no man or very few intended 
 to write in any laudable science ; so that beyond 
 that time there is little or nothing worth com- 
 mendation to be found written in this art 31 . 
 
 And those of the first age were Chaucer and 
 Gower, both of them as I suppose Knights. After 
 whom followed John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, 
 and that nameless, who wrote the Satire called 
 Piers Plowman 32 . Next him followed Harding 
 
 31 Chaucer, it should be remembered, was nearer in 
 date to Puttenham than Shakespeare is to ourselves. 
 Moreover, when Puttenham was writing, Shakespeare 
 had not yet arrived in London. These considerations 
 should be borne in mind in estimating the value of the 
 criticism that ' it will be found our nation is in nothing 
 inferior to the French or Italian '. 
 
 32 The Vision of Piers the Plowman is now attributed 
 to William Langland (1330 ? to 1400 ?) the details of 
 whose life have been pieced together, by a kind of circular 
 process, from the evidence supplied in this poem. It
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 191 
 
 the Chronicler, then in King Henry the Eighth's 
 times Skelton, (I wot not for what great worthness) 
 surnamed the Poet Laureate. In the latter end 
 of the same king's reign sprang up a new company 
 of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat 
 the elder and Henry Earl of Surrey were the two 
 chieftains, who having travelled into Italy, and 
 there tasted the sweet and stately measures and 
 style of the Italian Poesy as novices newly crept 
 out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto and Petrarch, 
 they greatly polished our rude and homely manner 
 of vulgar Poesy, from that it had been before, 
 and for that cause may justly be said the first 
 reformers of our English metre and style. In 
 the same time or not long after was the Lord 
 Nicholas Vaux, a man of much facility in vulgar 
 makings. 
 
 Afterward in King Edward the Sixth's time 
 came to be in reputation for the same faculty 
 Thomas Sternehold, who first translated into 
 English certain Psalms of David, and John Hey- 
 wood the Epigrammatist, who for the mirth and 
 quickness of his conceits more than for any good 
 learning was in him came to be well benefited 
 by the king. But the principal man in this 
 profession at the same time was Master Edward 
 Ferris 33 , a man of no less mirth and felicity that 
 
 dealt with social and philosophical matters in a discursive 
 and irregular manner, and is not inaptly described here 
 as a ' satire '. 
 
 33 ' Edward Ferris ' is doubtless George Ferrers (or 
 Ferris), who was born about 1500 and died in 1579, so 
 recently indeed in relation to this treatise that the 
 slip in the fore-name is somewhat remarkable. He was 
 ' master of the King's pastimes ' in 155 1-2 was a member
 
 192 George Puttenham 
 
 way, but of much more skill and magnificence in 
 his metre, and therefore wrote for the most part 
 to the stage, in Tragedy and sometimes in Comedy 
 or Interlude, wherein he gave the king so much 
 good recreation, as he had thereby many good 
 rewards. 
 
 In Queen Mary's time flourished above any 
 other Doctor Phaer, one that was well learned, 
 and excellently well translated into English 
 verse Heroical certain books of Virgil's jEneid. 
 Since him followed Master Arthur Golding, who 
 with no less commendation turned into English 
 metre the Metamorphosis of Ovid and that other 
 Doctor, who made the supplement to those books 
 of Virgil's Mneid, which Master Phaer left un- 
 done 3 *. 
 
 And in her Majesty's time that now is are 
 sprung up another crew of Courtly makers, Noble 
 men and Gentlemen of her Majesty's own servants, 
 who have written excellently well, as it would 
 appear if their doings could be found out and 
 made public with the rest, of which number 
 is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earl of 
 Oxford. Thomas Lord of Buckhurst, when he 
 was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, 
 Sir Walter Ralegh, Master Edward Dyer, Master 
 
 of Parliament for many years, and is chiefly remembered 
 to-day as the compiler with William Baldwin of The Mirror 
 of Magistrates, a valuable series of moral and historical 
 sketches in verse, completed in 1578, under the general 
 authorship of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. 
 
 34 Thomas Twyne (1543-1613) translated the three 
 books (part of x, xi and xn) of The Aeneid, left undone by 
 Thomas Phaer (1510? -1560). Arthur Golding's dates 
 were about 1536-1605. His version of Ovid is celebrated 
 as having been much used by Shakespeare.
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 193 
 
 Fulke Grevell, Gascon, Britton, Turberville and 
 a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose 
 names I do not omit for envy, but to avoid tedious- 
 ness, and who have deserved no little commen- 
 dation. But of them all particularly this is my 
 opinion, that Chaucer, with Gower, Lydgate and 
 Harding for their antiquity ought to have the first 
 place, and Chaucer as the most renowned of them 
 all, for the much learning appeareth to be in him 
 above any of the rest. And though many of his 
 books be but bare translations out of the Latin 
 and French, yet are they well handled, as his 
 books of Troilus and Cresseid, and the Romant 
 of the Pose, whereof he translated but one half, 
 the device was John de Mehun's a French Poet. 
 The Canterbury Tales were Chaucer's own invention 
 as I suppose, and where he showeth more the 
 natural of his pleasant wit than in any other 
 of his works, his similitudes, comparisons and 
 all other descriptions are such as cannot be 
 amended. His metre Heroical of Troilus and Cres- 
 seid is very grave and stately, keeping the staff of 
 seven, and the verse of ten, his other verses of the 
 Canterbury Tales be but riding rhyme, nevertheless 
 very well becoming the matter of that pleasant 
 pilgrimage in which every man's part is played 
 with much decency. 
 
 Gower, saving for his good and grave moralities, 
 had nothing in him highly to be commended, for 
 his verse was homely and without good measure, 
 his words strained much deal out of the French 
 writers, his rhyme wrested, and in his inventions 
 small subtlety : the applications of his moralities 
 are the best in him, and yet those many times very 
 E.L. N
 
 194 George Puttenham 
 
 grossly bestowed, neither doth the substance 
 of his works sufficiently answer the subtlety of his 
 titles. Lydgate a translator only and no deviser 
 of that which he wrote, but one that wrote in 
 good verse. Harding, a Poet Epic or Historical, 
 handled himself well according to the time and 
 manner of his subject. He that wrote the Satire 
 of Piers Ploughman seemed to have been a mal- 
 content of that time, and therefore bent himself 
 wholly to tax the disorders of that age, and 
 specially the pride of the Roman Clergy, of whose 
 fall he seemeth to be a very true Prophet. His 
 verse is but loose metre, and his terms hard and 
 obscure, so that in them is little pleasure to be 
 taken. Skelton, a sharp Satirist, but with more 
 railing and scoffery than became a Poet Laureate, 
 such among the Greeks were called Pantomimi, 
 with us Buffoons, altogether applying their wits 
 to scurrilities and other ridiculous matters. Henry 
 Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyat, between 
 whom I find very little difference, I repute them 
 (as before) for the two chief lanterns of light to 
 all others that have since employed their pens 
 upon English Poesy ; their conceits were lofty, 
 their styles stately, their conveyance cleanly, 
 their terms proper, their metre sweet and well- 
 proportioned, in all imitating very naturally and 
 studiously their Master Francis Petrarch. The 
 Lord Vaux his commendation lieth chiefly in the 
 facility of his metre, and the aptness of his des- 
 criptions such as he taketh upon him to make, 
 namely in sundry of his Songs, wherein he showeth 
 the counterfeit action very lively and pleasantly. 
 Of the later sort I think thus : That for Tragedy
 
 Of Poets and Poesy 195 
 
 the Lord of Buckhurst and Master Edward Ferris 
 for such doings as I have seen of theirs do deserve 
 the highest price. The Earl of Oxford and Master 
 Edwards of her Majesty's Chapel for Comedy and 
 Interlude. For Eclogue and pastoral Poesy, Sir 
 Philip Sidney and Master Challenner, and that 
 other Gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's 
 Calendar 36 . For ditty and amorous Ode I find 
 Sir Walter Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent, and 
 passionate. Master Edward Dyer for Elegy 
 most sweet, solemn, and of high conceit. Gascon 
 for a good metre and for a plentiful vein. Phaer 
 and Golding for a learned and well corrected 
 verse, specially in translation clear and very 
 faithfully answering their author's intent. 
 
 Others have also written with much facility, 
 but more commendably perchance if they had 
 not written so much nor so popularly. But last 
 in recital and first in degree is the Queen our 
 sovereign Lady, whose learned, delicate, noble 
 Muse easily surmounteth all the rest that have 
 written before her time or since, for sense, sweet- 
 ness and subtlety, be it in Ode, Elegy, Epigram, 
 or any other kind of poem Heroic or Lyric, wherein 
 it shall please her Majesty to employ her pen, 
 even by as much odds as her own excellent estate 
 and degree exceedeth all the rest of her most 
 humble vassals. 
 
 35 Edmund Spenser : Sidney and Webbe have more 
 to say about this ' other gentleman '. The concluding 
 sentence in this discourse was doubtless in good taste at 
 the time of its composition.
 
 WILLIAM WEBBE 
 
 A DISCOURSE OF ENGLISH 
 
 POETRY 
 
 INTENDING to write some discourse of English 
 Poetry, I think it not amiss if I speak something 
 generally of Poetry, as, what it is, whence it had 
 the beginning, and of what estimation it hath 
 always been and ought to be among all sorts of 
 people. Poetry called in Greek troerpia, being 
 derived from the Verb 7rot'eo>, which signifieth in 
 Latin facere, in English, to make, may properly 
 be denned, the art of making * : which word as it 
 hath always been especially used of the best of our 
 English Poets, to express the very faculty of 
 speaking or writing Poetically, so doth it indeed 
 contain most fitly the whole grace and property of 
 the same, the more fully and effectually than any 
 other English Verb. That Poetry is an Art (or 
 rather a more excellent thing than can be con- 
 tained within the compass of Art) though I need 
 not stand long to prove, both the witness of 
 Horace, who wrote de Arts Poetica, and of Terence, 
 
 1 This is the conventional opening, which varies hardly 
 at all from that of Sidney or Puttenham. 
 
 197
 
 198 William Webbe 
 
 who calleth it Artem Musicam, and the very 
 natural property thereof may sufficiently declare. 
 The beginning of it, as appeareth by Plato, was 
 of a virtuous and most devout purpose, who 
 witnesseth, that by occasion of meeting of a great 
 company of young men, to solemnize the feasts 
 which were called Panegenca and were wont to 
 be celebrated every fifth year there, they that 
 were most pregnant in wit, and indued with great 
 gifts of wisdom and knowledge in Music above the 
 rest did use commonly to make goodly verses, 
 measured according to the sweetest notes of Music, 
 containing the praise of some noble virtue, or of 
 immortality, or of some such thing of greatest 
 estimation : which unto them seemed so heavenly 
 and joyous a thing that, thinking such men to be 
 inspired with some divine instinct from heaven, 
 they called them Vales. So when other among 
 them of the finest wits and aptest capacities began 
 in imitation of these to frame ditties of lighter 
 matters, and tuning them to the stroke of some 
 of the pleasantest kind of Music, then began there 
 to grow a distinction and great diversity between 
 makers and makers. Whereby (I take it) began 
 this difference : that they which handled in the 
 audience of the people grave and necessary matters 
 were called wise men or eloquent men, which they 
 meant by Vates : and the rest which sang of love 
 matters, or other lighter devices alluring unto 
 pleasure and delight, were called Poetce or makers 2 . 
 
 2 Webbe's distinction between vates and poeta 
 prophecy and poetry has no particular value. Like 
 other verbal hair-splitting, carried further in Puttenham 
 than in Sidney, but noticeable in both, it differs from
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 199 
 
 Thus it appeareth, both Eloquence and Poetry to 
 have had their beginning and original from these 
 exercises, being framed in such sweet measure of 
 sentences and pleasant harmony called Rhythmos, 
 which is an apt composition of words or clauses, 
 drawing as it were by force the hearer's ears even 
 whithersoever it listeth : that Plato afnrmeth 
 therein to be contained ' an enchantment', as 
 it were, to persuade them anything, whether they 
 would or no. And herehence is said that men were 
 first withdrawn from a wild and savage kind of life, 
 to civility and gentleness, and the right knowledge 
 of humanity by the force of this measurable or 
 tunable speaking. 
 
 This opinion shall you find confirmed throughout 
 the whole works of Plato and Aristotle. And that 
 such was the estimation of this Poetry at those 
 times, that they supposed all wisdom and know- 
 ledge to be included mystically in that divine 
 
 modern methods of criticism by caring too much for the 
 letter and too little for the spirit. The knowledge-value 
 does not lie in the words, but in the intention and the 
 meaning attached to them. The root of the matter is not 
 here, and Professor Saintsbury, though he admits that 
 ' Webbe, to the best of his modest powers, was a devotee 
 of literature ', takes a short cut through what he describes 
 as ' the usual etymological definition of poetry as making, 
 and the usual comments on the word vates ' (History of 
 Criticism, Vol. ii, Ch. 5, Blackwood). 
 
 On the suggested distinction in this paragraph between 
 eloquence and poetry, John Stuart Mill has a little-known 
 but memorable remark in his essay on ' Poetry and Its 
 Varieties ' : ' Poetry and eloquence are both alike the 
 expression or utterance of feeling. But, if we may be 
 excused the antithesis, we should say that eloquence 
 is heard, poetry is overheard ' (Dissertations and Discussions 
 I, 57, Routledge).
 
 20O William Webbe 
 
 instinction, wherewith they thought their Vates 
 to be inspired. Whereupon, throughout the noble 
 works of those most excellent Philosophers before 
 named, are the authorities of Poets very often 
 alleged. And Cicero in his Tusculan questions is 
 of that mind, that a Poet cannot express verses 
 abundantly, sufficiently, and fully, neither his 
 eloquence can flow pleasantly, or his words sound 
 well and plenteously, without celestial instinction : 
 which Poets themselves do very often and gladly 
 witness of themselves, as namely Ovid in the sixth 
 book of his Fasti : Est deus in nobis agitante 
 calescimus illo, etc. Whereunto I doubt not 
 equally to adjoin the authority of our late famous 
 English Poet, who wrote the Shepherd's Calendar, 
 where, lamenting the decay of Poetry at these days, 
 saith most sweetly to the same : 
 
 Then make thee wings of thine aspiring wit, 
 
 And, whence thou earnest, fly back to heaven apace. 
 
 Whose fine poetical wit and most exquisite 
 learning, as he showed abundantly in that piece 
 of work, in my judgment inferior to the works 
 neither of Theocritus in Greek, nor Virgil in Latin, 
 whom he narrowly imitateth : so I nothing doubt, 
 but if his other works were common abroad, which 
 are as I think in the close custody of certain his 
 friends, we should have of our own Poets, whom 
 we might match in all respects with the best. And 
 among all other his works whatsoever, I would 
 wish to have the sight of his English Poet, which 
 his friend ' E. K.' did once promise to publish, 
 which whether he performed or not I know not,
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 201 
 
 if he did, my hap hath not been so good as yet to 
 see it 3 . 
 
 But to return to the estimation of Poetry. 
 Besides the great and profitable fruits contained in 
 Poetry, for the instruction of manners and pre- 
 cepts of good life (for that was chiefly respected 
 in the first age of Poetry) this is also added to the 
 eternal commendations of that noble faculty : that 
 Kings and Princes, great and famous men, did 
 ever encourage, maintain, and reward Poets in all 
 
 3 The lines occur in the Tenth Eclogue (October) 
 of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. Pierce is speaking : 
 
 O peerless Poesy ! where is then thy place ? 
 If nor in Prince's palace thou do sit 
 (And yet is Prince's palace the most fit), 
 Nor breast of baser birth doth thee embrace, 
 Then make thee wings of thine aspiring wit, 
 And, whence thou earnest, fly back to Heaven apace. 
 
 Note that Webbe does not agree with Sidney (see 
 p. 93 supra), who ' dared not allow ' the rustic language 
 of this poem because ' neither Theocritus, nor Virgil 
 affected ' it. As Sidney's treatise was circulated in 
 MS., it is extremely probable that Webbe is directly 
 referring to that criticism in this passage. 
 
 ' E.K. ' is Edward Kirke, a College friend of Spenser's, 
 who supervised the publication of The Shepherd's Calendar, 
 supplying it liberally with notes, dedicatory epistles, 
 glosses, and so forth. In the note prefatory to this zoth 
 eclogue, Kirke explained the argument as a defence of 
 poetry, which a ' heavenly instinct. . . poured into the 
 wit by a certain . . . celestial inspiration, as the Author 
 hereof (Spenser) elsewhere at large discourseth in his 
 book called The English Poet, which book being lately 
 come to my hands I mind also by God's grace upon further 
 advisement to publish'. There is no record of its pub- 
 lication, though, like Webbe, we should be glad to see it. 
 Note that the same need to apologize for poetry operated 
 in Spenser as in the authors of these treatises, but, as 
 Webbe had the wit to see, Spenser's own poetry was the 
 best reply to Gosson and his school.
 
 202 William Webbe 
 
 ages : because they were thought only to have the 
 whole power in their hands of making men either 
 immortally famous for their valiant exploits and 
 virtuous exercises, or perpetually infamous for 
 their vicious lives. Whereupon it is said of 
 Achilles, that this only vantage he had of Hector, 
 that it was his fortune to be extolled and renowned 
 by the heavenly verse of Homer. And as Tully 
 recordeth to be written of Alexander, that with 
 natural tears he wept over Achilles' Tomb, in joy 
 that he conceived at the consideration, how it was 
 his hap to be honoured with so divine a work, as 
 Homer's was. Aristotle, a most prudent and 
 learned Philosopher, being appointed Schoolmaster 
 to the young Prince Alexander, thought no work 
 so meet to be read unto a King as the work of 
 Homer : wherein the young Prince being by him 
 instructed thoroughly, found such wonderful de- 
 light in the same when he came to maturity, that 
 he would not only have it with him in all his 
 journeys, but in his bed also under his pillow, to 
 delight him and teach him both nights and days. 
 The same is reported of noble Scipio, who finding 
 the two Books of Homer in the spoil of King 
 Darius, esteemed them as wonderful precious 
 jewels, making one of them his companion for the 
 night, the other for the day. And not only was 
 he thus affected to that one piece or part of Poetry, 
 but so generally he loved the professors thereof 
 that in his most serious affairs and hottest wars 
 against Numantia and Carthage he could no whit 
 be without that old Poet Ennius in his company. 
 But to speak of all those noble and wise Princes 
 who bare special favour and countenance to Poets
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 203 
 
 were tedious, and would require a rehearsal of all 
 such in whose time there grew any to credit and 
 estimation in that faculty. Thus far therefore 
 may suffice for the estimation of Poets. Now I 
 think most meet to speak somewhat concerning 
 what hath been the use of Poetry, and wherein it 
 rightly consisted, and whereof consequently it 
 obtained such estimation. 
 
 To begin therefore with the first that was first 
 worthily memorable in the excellent gift of Poetry, 
 the best writers agree that it was Orpheus, who 
 by the sweet gift of his heavenly Poetry withdrew 
 men from ranging uncertainly and wandering 
 brutishly about, and made them gather together, 
 and keep company, made houses, and kept fellow- 
 ship together, who therefore is reported (as Horace 
 saith) to assuage the fierceness of Tigers, and 
 move the hard flints. After him was Amphion, 
 who was the first that caused Cities to be builded, 
 and men therein to live decently and orderly 
 according to law and right. Next was Tyrtaeus, 
 who began to practise warlike defences, to keep 
 back enemies, and save themselves from invasion 
 of foes. In this place I think were most convenient 
 to rehearse that ancient Poet Pindar : but of the 
 certain time wherein he flourished I am not very 
 certain * : but of the place where he continued 
 most, it should seem to be the City of Thebes, by 
 Pliny, who reporteth that Alexander, in sacking 
 the same City, would not suffer the house wherein 
 he dwelt to be spoiled as all the rest were. After 
 these was Homer, who as it were in one sum 
 
 4 The date commonly given is the century 522-422 B.C.
 
 204 William Webbe 
 
 comprehended all knowledge, wisdom, learning, 
 and policy, that was incident to the capacity of 
 man. And who so list to take view of his two 
 Books, one of his Iliad, the other his Odyssy, shall 
 thoroughly perceive what the right use of Poetry is : 
 which indeed is to mingle profit with pleasure, 
 and so to delight the Reader with pleasantness 
 of his Art, that in the meantime his mind may be 
 well instructed with knowledge and wisdom. For 
 so did that worthy Poet frame those his two 
 works, that in reading the first, that is his Iliad, 
 by declaring and setting forth so lively the Gre- 
 cians' assembly against Troy, together with their 
 prowess and fortitude against their foes, a Prince 
 shall learn not only courage, and valiantness, but 
 discretion also and policy to encounter with his 
 enemies, yea a perfect form of wise consultations 
 with his captains, and exhortations to the people, 
 with other infinite commodities. 
 
 Again, in the other part, wherein are described 
 the manifold and dangerous adventures of Ulysses, 
 may a man learn many noble virtues : and also 
 learn to escape and avoid the subtle practices, and 
 perilous entrappings of naughty persons : and not 
 only this, but in what sort also he may deal to know 
 and perceive the affections of those which be near 
 unto him, and most familiar with him, the better 
 to put them in trust with his matters of weight and 
 importance. Therefore I may boldly set down 
 this to be the truest, ancientest and best kind of 
 Poetry, to direct one's endeavour always to that 
 mark, that with delight they may evermore 
 adjoin commodity to their readers : which because 
 I ground upon Homer the Prince of all Poets,
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 205 
 
 therefore have I alleged the order of his work, as 
 an authority sufficiently proving this assertion. 
 
 Now what other poets which followed him, and 
 been of greatest fame, have done for the most part 
 in their several works I will briefly, and as my 
 slender ability will serve me, declare. But by my 
 leave, I must content myself to speak not of all, 
 but of such as myself have seen, and been best 
 acquainted withal, and those not all nor the most 
 part of the ancient Grecians, of whom I know not 
 how many there were, but these of the Latinists, 
 which are of greatest fame and most obvious 
 among us. 
 
 Thus much I can say, that Aristotle reporteth 
 none to have greatly flourished in Greece, at 
 leastwise not left behind them any notable me- 
 morial, before the time of Homer. And Tully 
 saith as much, that there were none writ worth the 
 reading twice in the Roman tongue, before the 
 Poet Ennius. And surely as the very sum or 
 chiefest essence of Poetry did always for the most 
 part consist in delighting the readers or hearers 
 with pleasure, so, as the number of Poets increased, 
 they still inclined this way rather than the other, 
 so that most of them had special regard to the 
 pleasantness of their fine conceits, whereby they 
 might draw men's minds into admiration of their 
 inventions, more than they had to the profit or 
 commodity that the readers should reap by their 
 works. And thus as I suppose came it to pass 
 among them, that for the most part of them, they 
 would not write one work containing some serious 
 matter : but for the same they would likewise 
 pour forth as much of some wanton or lascivious
 
 206 William Webbe 
 
 invention. Yet some of the ancientest sort of 
 Grecians, as it seemeth, were not so much disposed 
 to vain delectation : as Aristotle saith of Empe- 
 docles, that in his judgment he was only a natural 
 philosopher, no poet at all, nor that he was like 
 unto Homer in anything but his metre, or number 
 of feet, that is, that he wrote in verse. After the 
 time of Homer, there began the first Comedy 
 writers, who compiled their works in a better style, 
 which continued not long before it was expelled 
 by penalty, for scoffing too broad at men's man- 
 ners, and the privy revengements which the Poets 
 used against their ill-willers. Among these was 
 Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, but after- 
 ward the order of this writing Comedies was 
 reformed and made more plausible : then wrote 
 Plato, Comicus, Menander, and I know not who 
 more. 
 
 There be many most profitable works, of like 
 antiquity, or rather before them, of the Tragedy 
 writers : as of Euripides, and Sophocles ; then 
 was there Phocitides and Theagines, with many 
 other : which Tragedies had their invention by 
 one Thespis, and were polished and amended by 
 ./Eschylus. The profit or discommodity which 
 ariseth by the use of these Comedies and Tragedies, 
 which is most, hath been long in controversy, and 
 is sore urged among us at these days 5 : what I 
 think of the same, perhaps I shall briefly declare 
 anon. 
 
 Now concerning the Poets which wrote in 
 
 6 In reference once more to Gosson and the Puritanic 
 objectors to stage performances.
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 207 
 
 homely manner, as they pretended, but indeed, 
 with great pith and learned judgment, such as 
 were the writers of Shepherds' talk and of hus- 
 bandly precepts, who were among the Grecians 
 that excelled, besides Theocritus and Hesiodus I 
 know not, of whom the first, what profitable works 
 he left to posterity, besides his Idyllia or con- 
 tentions of Goatherds, tending most to delight, 
 and pretty inventions, I cannot tell 6 . The other, 
 no doubt for his Argument he took in hand, dealt 
 very learnedly and profitably, that is, in precepts 
 of Husbandry, but yet so as he mixed much 
 wanton stuff among the rest. 
 
 The first writers of Poetry among the Latins, 
 should seem to be those which excelled in the 
 framing of Comedies, and that they continued a 
 long time without any notable memory of other 
 Poets. Among whom, the chiefest that we may 
 see or hear tell of, were these : Ennius, Caecilius 
 Naevius, Licinius, Attilius, Turpitius, Trabea, 
 Luscius, Plautus, and Terence. Of whom these 
 two last-named have been ever since their time 
 most famous, and to these days are esteemed, as 
 great helps and furtherances to the obtaining of 
 good Letters. But here cannot I stay to speak of 
 the most famous, renowned and excellent that 
 ever wrote among the Latin Poets, P. Virgil, who 
 performed the very same in that tongue which 
 Homer had done in Greek : or, rather, better (if 
 better might), as Propertius in his Elegies gal- 
 lantly recordeth in his praise, Nescio quid magis 
 
 6 Webbe is quite frank in this place and above 'the 
 ancient Grecians, of whom I know not how many there 
 were ' as to his comparative ignorance of Greek literature.
 
 208 William Webbe 
 
 nascitur Iliade. Under the person of ^Eneas he 
 expresseth the valour of a worthy Captain and 
 valiant Governor, together with the perilous 
 adventures of war, and politic devises at all assays. 
 And as he imitateth Homer in that work, so doth 
 he likewise follow the very steps of Theocritus, 
 in his most pithy inventions of his Eclogues : 
 and likewise Hesiod in his Georgics or books of 
 Husbandry, but yet more gravely, and in a more 
 decent style. But notwithstanding his sage grav- 
 ity and wonderful wisdom, did he not altogether 
 restrain his vein, but that he would have a cast at 
 some wanton and scant comely an Argument, if 
 indeed such trifles as be fathered upon him were 
 his own 7 . There followed after him very many 
 rare and excellent Poets, whereof the most part 
 wrote light matters, as Epigrams and Elegies, 
 with much pleasant dalliance, among whom may 
 be accounted Propertius, Tibullus, Catullus, with 
 divers whom Ovid speaketh of in divers places of 
 his works. Then are there two Historical Poets 
 no less profitable than delightsome to be read : 
 Silius and Lucan : the one declaring the valiant 
 prowess of two noble Captains, one enemy to the 
 other, that is, Scipio and Hannibal : the other 
 likewise, the fortitude of two expert warriors 
 (yet more lamentably than the other because 
 these wars were civil) Pompey and Caesar 8 . The 
 
 7 Webbe, who is plainly a much better Roman scholar 
 than Greek, is referring to the stories told in Donatus' life 
 of Virgil and elsewhere. Such a story was quoted by 
 Puttenham (p. 1^4 supra), and it is perhaps that passage 
 which Webbe had directly in mind. 
 
 8 Silius Italicus (25 to 100 A.D.) wrote a heroic poem on 
 the Punic Wars, Punica ; Lucan (39 to 65 A.D.) wrote one
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry\ 209 
 
 next in time (but as most men do account, and 
 so did he himself) the second in dignity, we will 
 adjoin Ovid, a most learned and exquisite Poet. 
 The work of greatest profit which he wrote, was 
 his Book of Metamorphosis which, though it con- 
 sisted of feigned Fables for the most part and 
 poetical inventions, yet being moralized according 
 to his meaning, and the truth of every tale being 
 discovered, it is a work of exceeding wisdom and 
 sound judgment. If one list in like manner to have 
 knowledge and perfect intelligence of those rites 
 and ceremonies which were observed after the 
 Religion of the Heathen, no more profitable work 
 for that purpose than his books De fastis. The 
 rest of his doings, though they tend to the vain 
 delights of love and dalliance (except his Tristibus 
 wherein he bewaileth his exile) yet surely are 
 mixed with much good counsel and profitable 
 lessons if they be wisely and narrowly read. After 
 his time I know no work of any great fame, till the 
 time of Horace, a Poet not of the smoothest style, 
 but in sharpness of wit inferior to none, and one 
 to whom all the rest both before his time and since, 
 are very much beholding. About the same tune 
 Juvenal and Persius, then Martial, Seneca a most 
 excellent writer of Tragedies Boetius, Lucretius, 
 Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Manilius, Ausonius, 
 Claudian, and many other, whose just times and 
 
 on"' Caesar and Pompey, Pharsalia, starting after the 
 crossing of the Rubicon. We gather that, like many 
 Elizabethans, Webbe's Latinity was confined chiefly to 
 Ovid and writers of the Silver period. He seems quite 
 at home with Ovid, though his reference to ' Propertius, 
 Tibullus, Catallus, with divers whom Ovid speaketh of ' 
 is plainly perfunctory. 
 
 E.L. O
 
 2io William Webbe 
 
 several works to speak of in this place were neither 
 much needful, nor altogether tolerable, because I 
 purposed another argument. Only I will add 
 two of later times, yet not far inferior to the most 
 of them aforesaid, Pallengenius, and Bap. Man- 
 tuanus, and for a singular gift in a sweet heroical 
 verse match with them Chr. Oclan, the author of 
 our Anglorum Prcelia 9 . But now lest I stray too 
 far from my purpose, I will come to our English 
 Poets, to whom I would I were able to yield their 
 deserved commendations, and afford them that 
 censure, which I know many would, which can 
 better, if they were now to write in my stead. 
 
 I know no memorable work written by any Poet 
 in our English speech, until twenty years past : 
 where, although learning was not generally decayed 
 at any time, especially since the Conquest of King 
 William Duke of Normandy, as it may appear by 
 many famous works and learned books (though 
 not of this kind) written by Bishops and others, 
 yet surely that Poetry was in small price among 
 them, it is very manifest, and no great marvel, for 
 even that light of Greek and Latin Poets which 
 they had they much contemned, as appeareth by 
 their rude versifying, which of long time was used 
 (a barbarous use it was) wherein they converted 
 
 8 This digression is even less ' tolerable ' Webbe having 
 ' purposed another argument ' than the catalogue of 
 Latinists just above. Christopher Ocland, or Oclan, 
 who died about 1590, was a country schoolmaster, who 
 wrote Latin poetical exercises on Queen Elizabeth, 
 on controversial topics, etc. His Battles of the English 
 (Anglorum Proelia) of 1580 was a Latin text in grammar- 
 schools, and there is more than a suspicion of ' log-rolling ' 
 in Webbe's inclusion thereof in a list which began with 
 Ennius and Virgil.
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 21 1 
 
 the natural property of the sweet Latin verse, to 
 be a bald kind of rhyming, thinking nothing to be 
 learnedly written in verse, which fell not out in 
 rhyme, that is, in words whereof the middle word 
 of each verse should sound alike with the last, or 
 of two verses, the end of both should fall in the 
 like letters as thus : 
 
 O male viventes, versus audite sequentes. 
 And thus likewise : 
 
 Propter haec et alia dogmata doctorum 
 Reor esse melius et magis decorum : 
 Quisque suam habeat, et non proximorum. 
 
 This brutish Poetry, though it had not the 
 beginning in this Country, yet so hath it been 
 affected here, that the infection thereof would 
 never (nor I think ever will) be rooted up again : 
 I mean this tinkerly verse which we call rhyme. 
 Master Ascham saith, that it first began to be 
 followed and maintained among the Huns and 
 Gothians, and other barbarous nations, who with 
 the decay of all good learning brought it into Italy : 
 from thence it came into France, and so to Ger- 
 many, at last conveyed into England by men 
 indeed of great wisdom and learning, but not con- 
 siderate nor circumspect in that behalf. But of 
 this I must intreat more hereafter. 
 
 Henry the first king of that name in England, 
 is wonderfully extolled in all ancient Records of 
 memory, for his singular good learning in all kind 
 of noble studies, insomuch that he was named by 
 his surname Beauclerk, as much to say as Fair-
 
 212 William Webbe 
 
 clerk (whereof perhaps came the name of Fair- 
 dough). What knowledge he attained in the skill 
 of Poetry, I am not able to say : I report his name 
 for proof that learning in this Country was not 
 little esteemed of at that rude time, and that like 
 it is, among other studies, a king would not neglect 
 the faculty of Poetry. The first of our English 
 Poets that I have heard of was John Gower, about 
 the time of King Richard the Second, as it should 
 seem by certain conjectures both a Knight, and 
 questionless a singular well-learned man : whose 
 works I could wish they were all whole and perfect 
 among us, for no doubt they contained very much 
 deep knowledge and delight : which may be 
 gathered by his friend Chaucer, who speaketh of 
 him oftentimes, in divers places of his works. 
 Chaucer, who for that excellent fame which he 
 obtained in his Poetry was always accounted the 
 ' God ' of English Poets (such a title for honour's 
 sake hath been given him) was next after, if not 
 equal in time to Gower, and hath left many works, 
 both for delight and profitable knowledge, far 
 exceeding any other that as yet ever since his 
 time directed their studies that way. Though the 
 manner of his style may seem blunt and coarse to 
 many fine English ears at these days, yet in truth, 
 if it be equally pondered, and with good judgment 
 advised, and confirmed with the time wherein he 
 wrote, a man shall perceive thereby even a true 
 picture or perfect shape of a right Poet. He by 
 his delightsome vein, so gulled the ears of men 
 with his devices that, although corruption bare 
 such sway in most matters, that learning and 
 truth might scant be admitted to show itself, yet
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 213 
 
 without controlment, might he gird at the vices 
 and abuses of all states, and gall with very sharp 
 and eager inventions, which he did so learnedly 
 and pleasantly, that none therefore would call 
 him into question. For such was his bold spirit, 
 that what enormities he saw in any, he would not 
 spare to pay them home, either in plain words, or 
 else in some pretty and pleasant covert, that the 
 simplest might espy him. 
 
 Near in time unto him was Lydgate, a Poet 
 surely for good proportion of his verse, and meetly 
 current style, as the time afforded, comparable 
 with Chaucer, yet more occupied in superstitious 
 and odd matters, than was requisite in so good a 
 wit : which, though he handled them commend- 
 ably, yet the matters themselves being not so 
 commendable, his estimation hath been the less. 
 The next of our ancient Poets, that I can tell of, I 
 suppose to be Piers Ploughman, who in his doings 
 is somewhat harsh and obscure, but indeed a very 
 pithy writer, and (to his commendation I speak it) 
 was the first that I have seen that observed the 
 quantity of our verse without the curiosity of 
 rhyme. 
 
 Since these I know none other till the time of 
 Skelton, who wrote in the time of King Henry the 
 Eighth, who, as indeed he obtained the Laurel 
 Garland, so may I with good right yield him the 
 title of a Poet : he was doubtless a pleasant con- 
 ceited fellow, and of a very sharp wit, exceeding 
 bold, and would nip to the very quick where he 
 once set hold. Next him I think I may place 
 master George Gascoigne, as painful a soldier in 
 the affairs of his Prince and country as he was a
 
 214 William Webbe 
 
 witty poet in his writing : whose commendations, 
 because I found in one of better judgment than 
 myself, I will set down his words, and suppress 
 my own. Of him thus writeth ' E. K.' upon the 
 ninth Eclogue of the new Poet : 
 
 Master George Gascoigne a witty gentleman and the 
 very chief of our late rhymers, who and if some parts 
 of learning wanted not (albeit is well known he altogether 
 wanted not learning) no doubt would have attained to the 
 excellency of those famous Poets. For gifts of wit and 
 natural promptness appear in him abundantly. 
 
 I might next speak of the divers works of the 
 old Earl of Surrey, of the Lord Vaux, of Norton, 
 of Bristow, Edwardes, Tusser, Churchyard, Will. 
 Hunnis, Heywood, Sanders, Hyll, S. Y. M. D., 
 and many others, but to speak of their several 
 gifts, and abundant skill showed forth by them in 
 many pretty and learned works would make my 
 discourse much more tedious 10 . 
 
 I may not omit the deserved commendations of 
 many honourable and noble Lords, and Gentlemen, 
 in her Majesty's Court, which in the rare devices 
 of Poetry have been and yet are most excellent 
 
 10 The names of the Elizabethan writers mentioned in 
 this paragraph will be found in any good history, with 
 the exceptions of William Hunnis, who died in 1597, 
 and was the author of metrical psalms and other works ; 
 Nicholas Sanders or Sander (Webbe's-E^f. pr. has ' Sand ' :) 
 who died in 1581, and was an historical writer and Roman 
 Catholic controversialist ; and Hyll, who is, perhaps, 
 to be identified with Adam Hill (died 1595), a prebendary 
 of Salisbury. No conjecture is offered as to the initials 
 S.Y.M.D. Richard Bristow (died 1581) was, like Sander, 
 a Roman Catholic divine, and the only names in this 
 list whose works posterity cares to read are Surrey and 
 Vaux, though Gascoigne, Tusser, Churchyard and Heywood 
 have distinct places in English literature.
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 215 
 
 skilful, among whom the right honourable Earl 
 of Oxford may challenge to himself the title of the 
 most excellent among the rest. I can no longer 
 forget those learned gentlemen which took such 
 profitable pains in translating the Latin Poets into 
 our English tongue, whose deserts in that behalf 
 are more than I can utter. Among these, I ever 
 esteemed, and while I live, in my conceit I shall 
 account Master D. Phaer : without doubt the 
 best : who as indeed he had the best piece of poetry 
 whereon to set a most gallant verse, so performed 
 he it accordingly, and in such sort, as in my con- 
 science I think would scarcely be done again, if 
 it were to do again. Notwithstanding, I speak it 
 but as mine own fancy, not prejudicial to those 
 that list to think otherwise. His work whereof 
 I speak is the Englishing of The JEneid of Virgil, 
 so far forth as it pleased God to spare him life, 
 which was to the half part of the tenth Book, the 
 rest being since with no less commendations 
 finished by that worthy scholar and famous 
 physician Master Thomas Twyne. 
 
 Equally with him may I well adjoin Master 
 Arthur Golding, for his labour in Englishing Ovid's 
 Metamorphosis, for which gentleman surely our 
 country hath for many respects greatly to give 
 God thanks : as for him which hath taken infinite 
 pains without ceasing, travelleth as yet inde- 
 fatigably, and is addicted without society, by his 
 continual labour, to profit this nation and speech 
 in all kind of good learning. The next, very well 
 deserveth Master Barnabe Googe to be placed, 
 as a painful furtherer of learning : his help to 
 Poetry besides his own devices, as the translating
 
 216 William Webbe 
 
 of Pallengenius Lodiac. Abraham Fleming, as 
 in many pretty Poesies of his own, so in translating 
 hath done to his commendations 11 . To whom 
 I would here adjoin one of his name, whom I know 
 to have excelled as well in all kind of learning as 
 in Poetry most especially, and would appear so, 
 if the dainty morsels and fine poetical inventions 
 of his were as common abroad as I know they be 
 among some of his friends. I will crave leave of 
 the laudable Authors of Seneca in English, of the 
 other parts of Ovid, of Horace, of Mantuan, and 
 divers other, because I would hasten to end this 
 rehearsal, perhaps offensive to some, whom either 
 by forgetfulness, or want of knowledge, I must 
 needs overpass. 
 
 And once again, I am humbly to desire pardon 
 of the learned company of Gentlemen Scholars, 
 and students of the Universities, and Inns of 
 Court, if I omit their several commendations in 
 this place, which I know a great number of them 
 have worthily deserved, in many rare devices, and 
 singular inventions of Poetry : for neither hath it 
 been my good hap to have seen all which I have 
 heard of, neither is my abiding in such place, where 
 I can with facility get knowledge of their works. 
 
 One gentleman notwithstanding among them 
 may I not overslip so far reacheth his fame, and 
 so worthy is he, if he have not already, to wear the 
 
 11 Abraham Fleming (died 1607), wrote a digest of 
 Holinshed and other works, besides translations. The 
 ' one of his name ' is unknown. Golding and Googe 
 are historically well-known, the former as the author 
 of Shakespeare's version of Ovid.
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 217 
 
 Laurel wreath, Master George Whetstone, a man 
 singularly well skilled in this faculty of Poetry. 
 To him I will join Anthony Munday, an earnest 
 traveller in this art, and in whose name I have seen 
 very excellent works, among which surely, the 
 most exquisite vein of a witty poetical head is 
 showed in the sweet sobs of Shepherds and Nymphs 
 a work well worthy to be viewed, and to be 
 esteemed as very rare Poetry. With these I may 
 place John Grange, Knight, Wylmott, Darrell, 
 F. C. F. K. G. B. and many other, whose names 
 come not now to my remembrance 12 . 
 
 This place have I purposely reserved for one, 
 who if not only, yet in my judgment principally 
 deserveth the title of the Tightest English Poet, 
 that ever I read : that is, the Author of the 
 Shepherd's Kalendar, intituled to the worthy gentle- 
 man Master Philip Sidney, whether it was Master 
 Sp. or what rare scholar in Pembroke Hall soever, 
 
 12 George Whetstone (c. 1544-1587) published a 
 miscellaneous volume of tales, etc., in prose and verse, 
 entitled Rock of Regard, in 1576; memorial verses on 
 Gascoigne, Sir Philip Sidney and others ; Promos and 
 Cassandra, a play (never acted) which suggested the 
 plot of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and other 
 works and adaptations. He served twice in Holland, and 
 took part in the Battle of Zutphen. 
 
 Anthony Munday (1553-1633) was author or part- 
 author of a large number of plays, ballads, romances, 
 etc., very little of which survives. John Grange was 
 the author of The Golden Aphroditis (1577), and the re- 
 maining names and initials are not much more worthy 
 of mention than those, ' whose names come not now 
 to my remembrance '. The catalogue-form of Webbe's 
 list of names serves really to emphasize his selections of 
 1 the new poet ', Edmund Spenser, to whose Shepherd's 
 Calendar he pays so just and so creditable a meed of 
 admiration.
 
 2i8 William Webbe 
 
 because himself and his friends, for what respect 
 I know not, would not reveal it, I force not greatly 
 to set down : sorry I am that I cannot find none 
 other with whom I might couple him in this 
 Catalogue, in his rare gift of Poetry : although one 
 there is, though now long since, seriously occupied 
 in graver studies (Master Gabriel Harvey) yet, 
 as he was once his most special friend and fellow 
 poet, so because he hath taken such pains, not only 
 in his Latin Poetry (for which he enjoyed great 
 commendations of the best both in judgment and 
 dignity in this Realm) but also to reform our 
 English verse, and to beautify the same with 
 brave devices, of which I think the chief lie hid in 
 hateful obscurity : therefore will I adventure to 
 set them together, as two of the rarest wits and 
 learnedst masters of Poetry in England. Whose 
 worthy and notable skill in this faculty, I would 
 wish if their high dignities and serious businesses 
 would permit, they would still grant to be a 
 furtherance to that reformed kind of Poetry, which 
 Master Harvey did once begin to ratify : and surely 
 in mine opinion, if he had chosen some graver 
 matter, and handled but with half that skill, which 
 I know he could have done, and not poured it 
 forth at a venture, as a thing between jest 
 and earnest, it had taken greater effect than it 
 did. 
 
 As for the other gentleman, if it would please 
 him or his friends to let those excellent Poems, 
 whereof I know he hath plenty, come abroad, as 
 his Dreams, his Legends, his Court of Cupid, his 
 English Poet with other : he should not only stay 
 the rude pens of myself and others, but also satisfy
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 219 
 
 the thirsty desires of many which desire nothing 
 more, than to see more of his rare inventions. If 
 I join to Master Harvey his two brethren, I am 
 assured, though they be both busied with great 
 and weighty callings (the one a godly and learned 
 Divine, the other a famous and skilful physician) 
 yet if they listed to set to their helping hands to 
 Poetry, they would as much beautify and adorn it 
 as any others 13 . 
 
 If I let pass the uncountable rabble of rhyming 
 Ballad makers and compilers of senseless sonnets, 
 who be most busy to stuff every stall full of gross 
 
 33 Gabriel Harvey (1545-1630) was the 'father', 
 as it were, of the Leicester House clique, self-styled 
 The Areopagus. Webbe's collocation of his name with 
 Spenser's was a natural error which lay in the circum- 
 stances of the time. It would have pleased Spenser at 
 the moment, and would have informed the public of the 
 aims and type of the new poet. Thus, however absurd 
 it may sound to-day, it had critical justification. 
 Harvey's brothers, John and Richard, were both Cam- 
 bridge men, and are both described as astrologers. 
 
 The next two paragraphs are interesting in themselves, 
 and in their references. The Barley-crown, in place of 
 the Laurel, which Webbe would set on the head of the 
 ' pottical ' or ale-house poets was changed to purest 
 bays when Shakespeare a year or two later became a 
 member of the Mermaid circle. The ' rakehelly rout of 
 our ragged rhymers ' is a fine piece of alliterative scorn 
 levelled at the euphuizing ' letter-hunters ', of whom 
 (in this context) Gosson was a chief offender. The opening 
 ' In regard (he meaneth . . .)' probably conceals a lost line : 
 it is possible that Webbe referred directly here to some 
 writer who would thus be the subject of ' he '. 
 
 The abrupt ending is due to the fact that Webbe goes 
 on from here to an examination of ' The Matter of English 
 Poetry (including a comparison of Phaer's Mneid with 
 Virgil's original)', and then to lengthy considerations of 
 metrical forms, into which he introduced meritorious but 
 dull experiments of his own in English hexameters and 
 sapphics. These portions of his Discourse are omitted.
 
 22O William Webbe 
 
 devices and unlearned pamphlets : I trust I shall 
 with the best sort be held excused. Nor though 
 many such can frame an alehouse song of five or 
 six score verses, hobbling upon some tune of a 
 Northen lygge, or Robin Hood, or La lubber, etc., 
 and perhaps observe just number of syllables, 
 eight in one line, six in another, and there withal 
 an A to make a jerk in the end ; yet if these might 
 be accounted poets (as it is said some of them make 
 means to be promoted to the Laurel) surely we 
 shall shortly have whole swarms of poets : and 
 every one that can frame a Book in Rhyme, though 
 for want of matter it be but in commendations 
 of copper noses or bottle ale, will catch at the 
 Garland due to Poets : whose pottical poetical 
 (I should say) heads, I would wish, at their wor- 
 shipful commencements might, instead of Laurel, 
 be gorgeously garnished with fair green barley, in 
 token of their good affection to our English malt. 
 One speaketh thus homely of them, with whose 
 words I will content myself for this time, because 
 I would not be too broad with them in mine own 
 speech. 
 
 In regard (he meaneth of the learned framing 
 the new Poet's works which wrote the Shepherd's 
 Calendar) : I scorn and spue out the rakehelly 
 rout of our ragged Rhymers, (for so themselves 
 use to hunt the Letter) which without learning 
 boast, without judgment jangle, without reason 
 rage and fume, as if some instinct of poetical spirit 
 had newly ravished them, above the meanness 
 of common capacity. And being in the midst of 
 all their bravery, suddenly for want of matter or 
 of Rhyme, or having forgotten their former conceit,
 
 A Discourse of English Poetry 221 
 
 they seem to be so pained and travailed in their 
 remembrance, as it were a woman in Childbirth, 
 or as that same Pythia when the trance came upon 
 her. Os rabidum fera corda domans, etc.
 
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