SPLENDIDIS LONGUM VALEDICO NUGIS
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Footnote:{1} Edward Wotton, elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton. He was knighted by Elizabeth in 1592, and made ptroller of her Household.
Observe the playfulness in Sidneys opening and close of a treatise written throughout in plain, manly English without Euphuism, and strictly reasoned.
{2} Here the introdu ends, and the argument begins with its Part 1. Poetry the first Light-giver.
{3} A fable from the "Hetamythium" of Laurentius Abstemius, Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and Librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo uhe Pontificate of Alexander VI. (1492-1503).
{4} Pliny says ("Nat. Hist.," lib. xi., cap. 62) that the young vipers, impatient to be born, break through the side of their mother, and so kill her.
{5} Part 2. Borrowed from by Philosophers.
{6} Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian Critias are represented by Plato as having listeo the discourse of Socrates on a Republic. Socrates calls oo show such a state in a. Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the a citizens of Attica, 10,000 years before, from an inroad of tless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis, in the Western O; a struggle of which record reserved iemple of Naith or Athe Sais, i, and handed down, through Solon, by family tradition to Critias. But first Timaeus agrees to expound the structure of the universe; then Critias, in a piece left unfinished by Plato, proceeds to show an ideal society in a against pressure of a dahat seems irresistible.
{7} Platos "Republic," book ii.
{8} Part 3. Borrowed from by Historians.
{9} Part 4. Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic.
{10} Part 5. And really sacred and propheti the Psalms of David.
{11} Part 6. By the Greeks, Poets were honoured with the name of Makers.
{12} Poetry is the one creative art. Astronomers and others repeat what they find.
{13} Poets improve Nature.
{14} And idealize man.
{15} Here a Sed Part of the Essay begins.
{16} Part 1. Poetry defined.
{17} Part 2. Its kinds. a. Divine.
{18..} Philosophical, which is perhaps too imitative.
{19} Marcus Manilius wrote uiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain.
{20} Poetry proper. {21} Part 3. Subdivisions of Poetry proper.
{22} Its essence is ihought, not in apparelling of verse.
{23} Heliodorus was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the fourth tury. His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the "AEthiopica," was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeths reign, translated into English.
{24} The Poets Work and Parts. Part 1. WORK: oetry does for us.
{25} Their clay lodgings - "Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we ot hear it." (Shakespeare, "Mert of Venice," act v., sc. 1) {26} Poetry best advahe end of all earthly learning, virtuous a.
{27} Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy.
{28} Its advantage herein over History.
{29} "All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorising thy trespass with pare." Shakespeare, "So" 35.
{30} "Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity."--Cicero, "De Oratore."
{31} In what mahe Poet goes beyond Philosopher, Historian, and all others (bating parison with the Divine).
{32} He is beyond the Philosopher.
{33} Horaces "Ars Poetica," lines 372-3. But Horace wrote "Non homines, non Di"--"her men, gods, nor lettered ns have admitted mediocrity is.&.quot;
{34} The moral on-places. on Place, "Locus unis," was a term used in old rhetoric to represeimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or ad a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text- book in the days of James I. and Charles I., "Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the su of books of on Places, like that collected by Stobaeus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled Polyanthea, provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter." Freque to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be haeyed; the term of rhetoric, "a on- place," came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in on speech, any tbbr>藏书网</abbr>rite saying good or bad, but only without wit in it.
{35} Thus far Aristotle. The whole passage in the "Poetics" runs:
"It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet are distinguished. The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it would still be a species of History, no less with metre than without. They are distinguished by this, that the oes what has been, the other what might be. On this at Poetry is more philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry is chiefly versant about general truth; History about particular. In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names. But what Alcibiades did, or what happeo him, this is particular truth."
{36} Justinus, who lived in the sed tury, made aome of the history of the Assyrian, Persian, Gre, Maian, and Roman Empires, frus Pompeius, who lived iime of Augustus.
{37} Dares Phrygius was supposed to have been a priest of Vul, who was in Troy during the siege, and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to him as early as the time of AElian, A.D. 230, was supposed, therefore, to be older than Homers.
{38} Quintus Curtius, a Roman historian of uain date, who wrote the history of Alexahe Great in ten books, of which two are lost and others defective.
{39} Not knowledge but practice.
{40} The Poet Monarch of all Human Sces.
{41} In "Loves Labours Lost" a resemblance has been fancied between this passage and Rosalinds description of Biron, and the jest:- "Which his fair tongue--ceits expositor - Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tables, And younger hearings are quite ravished, So sweet and voluble is his discourse."
{42} Virgils "AEneid," Book xii.:- "And shall this ground faied dastard Turnus flying view? Is it so vile a thing to die?" (Phaers Translation [1573].) {43} Instances of the power of the Poets work.
{44} Defectuous. This word, from the French "defectueux," is used twi the "Apologie for Poetrie."
{45} Part II. The PARTS of Poetry.
{46} Pastoral be ned?
{47} The close of Virgils seventh Eclogue--Thyrsis was vanquished, and Corydon ed with lasting glory.
{48} Or Elegiac?
{49} Or Iambic? or Satiric?
{50} From the first Satire of Persius, line 116, in a description of Homers satire:
"Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circum praecordia ludit," &c.
Shrewd Flaccus touches each vi his laughing friend. Dryden thus translated the whole passage:- "Unlike ihod, with cealed design Did crafty Horace his low numbers join; And, with a sly insinuating grace Laughed at his friend, and looked him in the face: Would raise a blush where secret vice he found; And tickle, while he gently probed the wound; With seeming innoce the crowd beguiled, But made the desperate passes while he smiled."
{51} From the end of the eleventh of Horaces epistles (Lib. 1):
" non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, Strenua nos exercet iia; navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hic est, Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus."
They ge their skies but not their mind who run across the seas; We toil in laboured idleness, ao live at ease With force of ships and four horse teams. That which you seek is here, At Ulubrae, unless your mind fail to be calm and clear.
"At Ulubrae" was equivalent to saying in the dullest er of the world, or anywhere. Ulubrae was a little town probably in Campania, a Roman Little Pedlington. Thomas Carlyle may have had this passage in mind when he gave to the same thought a grander form in Sartor Resartus:
"May we not say that the hour of spiritual enfranchisement is even this?
When your ideal world, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, bees revealed and thrown open, and you discover with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty, its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now sta, here or nowhere, is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be free.
Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself. Thy dition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pi in the impriso of the actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere, couldest thou only see."
{52} Or ic?
{53} In pistrinum. In the pounding-mill (usually worked by horses or asses).
{54} ic?
{55} The old song of Perd Douglas, Chevy Chase in its first form.
{56} Or the Heroic?
{57} Epistles I. ii. 4. Better than Chrysippus and tor. They were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, tor the first entator upon Plato.
{58} Summary of the argument thus far.
{59} Objes stated a.
{60} elius Agrippas book, "De Iudi Vanitate Stiarum et Artium," was first published in 1532; Erasmuss "Moriae En" was written in a week, in 1510, a in a few months through seveions.
{61} The obje to rhyme are.
{62} The first of these sentences is from Horace (Epistle I. xviii. 69):
"Fly from the inquisitive man, for he is a babbler." The sed, "While each pleases himself we are a credulous crowd," seems to be varied from Ovid (Fasti, iv. 311):- "scia mei famae mendacia risit: Sed nos in vitium credula turba sumus."
A mind scious ht laughs at the falsehoods of fame but towards vice we are a credulous crowd.
{63} The chief objes.
{64} That time might be better spent.
{65} Beg the question.
{66} That poetry is the mother of lies.
{67} That poetry is the nurse of abuse, iing us with wanton ailent desires.
{68} Rampire, rampart, the Old Fren of "rempart," was "rempar," from "remparer," to fortify.
{69} "I give him free leave to be foolish." A variation from the line (Sat. I. i. 63), "Quid facias illi? jubeas bbr>.９９lib?</abbr>miserum esse libenter."
{70} That Plato banished poets from his ideal Republic.
{71} Which authority certain barbarous and insipid writers would wrest into meaning that poets were to be thrust out of a state.
{72} Ion is a rhapsodist, in dialogue with Socrates, who ot uand why it is that his thoughts flow abundantly whealks of Homer. "I explain," says Socrates; "your talent in expounding Homer is not an art acquired by system ahod, otherwise it would have been applicable to other poets besides. It is a special gift, imparted to you by Divine power and inspiration. The like is true of the poet you expound. His genius does not spring from art, system, or method: it is a special gift emanating from the inspiration of the Muses. A poet is light, airy, holy person, who ot pose verses at all so long as his reason remains within him. The Muses take away his reason, substituting in place of it their own divine inspiration and special impulse . . . Like prophets and deliverers of oracles, thbbr></abbr>ese poets have their reason taken away, and bee the servants of the gods. It is not they who, bereft of their reason, speak in such sublime strains, it is the god who speaks to us, and speaks through them." Gerote, from whose volumes on Plato I quote this translation of the passage, placed "Ion" among the genuine dialogues of Plato.
{73} Guards, trimmings or fags.
{74} The Sed Summary.
{75} Causes of Defe English Poetry.
{76} From the invocation at the opening of Virgils AEneid (line 12), "Muse, bring to my mind the causes of these things: what divinity was injured . . . that one famous for piety should suffer thus."
{77} The ichel de lHopital, born in 1505, who joio his great political services (whicluded the keeping of the Inquisition out of France, and long labour to repress civil war) great skill in verse. He died in 1573.
{78} Whose heart-strings the Titan (Prometheus) fastened with a better clay. (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 35). Dryden translated the line, with its text -
"Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see Who keep themselves from this iion free, Whom gracious Heaven for nobler ends desigheir looks erected, and their clay refined."
{79} The orator is made, the poet born.
{80} What you will; the first that es.
{81} "Whatever I shall try to write will be verse." Sidney quotes from memory, and adapts to his text, Tristium IV. x. 26.
"Sponte sua carmen numeros ve ad aptos, Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat."
{82} HIS for "its" here as throughout; the word "its" not bei introduced into English writing.
{83} Defects in the Drama. It should be remembered that this was writtehe English drama was but twenty years old, and Shakespeare, aged about seventeen, had not yet e to London. The stro of Shakespeares precursors had not yet begun to write for the stage. Marlowe had not yet written; and the strength that was to e of the freedom of the English drama had yet to be shown.
{84} There was no sery on the Elizabethan stage.
{85} Messenger.
{86} From the egg.
{87} Bias, slope; French "biais."
{88} Juvenal, Sat. iii., lines 152-3. Which Samuel Johnson finely paraphrased in his "London:"
"Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a sful jest."
{89} Gee Baan (who died in 1582, aged seventy-six) had written in earlier life four Latin tragedies, when Professor of Huma Bordeaux, with Montaigne in his class.
{90} Defects in Lyric Poetry.
{91} Defects in Di. This being written only a year or two after the publication of "Euphues," represents that style of the day which was not created but represented by the book from which it took the name of "Euphuism."
{92} Nizolian paper-books, are onplace books of quotable passages, so called because an Italian grammarian, Marius Nizolius, born at Bersello in the fifteenth tury, and one of the scholars of the Renaissan the sixteenth, was one of the first producers of sues. His tribution was an alphabetical folio diary of phrases from Cicero: "Thesaurus Ciianus, sive Apparatus Liinae e scriptis Tullii Ciis collectus."
{93} "He lives and wins, nay, es to the Senate, nay, es to the Senate," &c.
{94} Pounded. Put in the pound, when found astray.
{95} Capacities of the English Language.
{96} Metre and Rhyme.
{97} Last Summary and playful peroration
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