Now {32}doth the peerless poet perform both;for whatsoever the philosopher saith should be done,he giveth a perfect picture of it,by some one by whom he pre-supposeth it was done,so as he coupleth the general notion with the particular example.A perfect picture,I say;for he yieldeth to the powers of the mind an image of that whereof the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish deion,which doth neither strike,pierce,nor possess the sight of the soul,so much as that other doth.For as,in outward things,to a man that had never seen an elephant,or a rhinoceros,who should tell him most exquisitely all their shape,colour,bigness,and particular marks?or of a gorgeous palace,an architect,who,declaring the full beauties,might well make the hearer able to repeat,as it were,by rote,all he had heard,yet should never satisfy his inward conceit,with being witness to itself of a true living knowledge;but the same man,as soon as he might see those beasts well painted,or that house well in model,should straightway grow,without need of any deion,to a judicial comprehending of them;so,no doubt,the philosopher,with his learned definitions,be it of virtue or vices,matters of public policy or private government,replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom,which,notwithstanding,lie dark before the imaginative and judging power,if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking picture of poesy.
Tully taketh much pains,and many times not without poetical help,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 fulness of all Calypso's delights,bewail his absence from barren and beggarly Ithaca.Anger,the Stoics said,was a short madness;let but Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage,killing or whipping sheep and oxen,thinking them the army of Greeks,with their chieftains Agamemnon and Menelaus;and tell me,if you have not a more familiar insight into anger,than finding in the schoolmen his 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 in 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 Gnatho,and our Chaucer's Pandar,so expressed,that we now use their names to signify their trades;and finally,all virtues,vices,and passions so in their own natural states 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 most absolute,though he,perchance,hath not so absolutely performed it.For the question is,whether the feigned image of poetry,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 profession,(as in truth,"Mediocribus esse poetis Non Di,non homines,non concessere columnae,"{33})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 common-places {34}of uncharitableness and humbleness,as the divine narration of Dives and Lazarus;or of disobedience and mercy,as the 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 in Abraham's bosom,would more constantly,as it were,inhabit both the memory and judgment.Truly,for myself (me seems),I see before mine 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 instructing parables.
For conclusion,I say the philosopher teacheth,but he teacheth obscurely,so as the learned only can understand him;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 those dumb speakers.
But now may it be alleged,that if this managing of matters be so fit for the imagination,then must the historian needs surpass,who brings 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 determineth this question,saying,that poetry is [Greek text],that is to say,it is more philosophical and more ingenious than history.
