If
we will believe Tully, it nourisheth and instructeth our youth,
delights our age, adorns our prosperity, comforts our adversity,
entertains us at home, keeps us company abroad, travels with us,
watches, divides the times of our earnest and sports, shares in our
country recesses and recreations; insomuch as the wisest and best
learned have thought her the absolute mistress of manners and
nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be
a rigid and austere poesy, they have, on the contrary, styled poesy
a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and guides us by the
hand to action with a ravishing delight and incredible sweetness.
But before we handle the kinds of poems, with their special
differences, or make court to the art itself, as a mistress, I would
lead you to the knowledge of our poet by a perfect information what
he is or should be by nature, by exercise, by imitation, by study,
and so bring him down through the disciplines of grammar, logic,
rhetoric, and the ethics, adding somewhat out of all, peculiar to
himself, and worthy of your admittance or reception.
1. Ingenium.
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