And as it is fit to read the best authors to youth first, so
let them be of the openest and clearest. {106a} As Livy before
Sallust, Sidney before Donne; and beware of letting them taste Gower
or Chaucer at first, lest, falling too much in love with antiquity,
and not apprehending the weight, they grow rough and barren in
language only. When their judgments are firm, and out of danger,
let them read both the old and the new; but no less take heed that
their new flowers and sweetness do not as much corrupt as the
others' dryness and squalor, if they choose not carefully. Spenser,
in affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I would have him
read for his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius. The reading of
Homer and Virgil is counselled by Quintilian as the best way of
informing youth and confirming man. For, besides that the mind is
raised with the height and sublimity of such a verse, it takes
spirit from the greatness of the matter, and is tinctured with the
best things. Tragic and lyric poetry is good, too, and comic with
the best, if the manners of the reader be once in safety. In the
Greek poets, as also in Plautus, we shall see the economy and
disposition of poems better observed than in Terence; and the
latter, who thought the sole grace and virtue of their fable the
sticking in of sentences, as ours do the forcing in of jests.
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