--The third requisite in our poet or maker is
imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another
poet to his own use. To make choice of one excellent man above the
rest, and so to follow him till he grow very he, or so like him as
the copy may be mistaken for the principal. Not as a creature that
swallows what it takes in crude, raw, or undigested, but that feeds
with an appetite, and hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and turn
all into nourishment. Not to imitate servilely, as Horace saith,
and catch at vices for virtue, but to draw forth out of the best and
choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it
into one relish and savour; make our imitation sweet; observe how
the best writers have imitated, and follow them. How Virgil and
Statius have imitated Homer; how Horace, Archilochus; how Alcaeus,
and the other lyrics; and so of the rest.
4. Lectio.--Parnassus.--Helicon.--Arscoron.--M. T. Cicero.--
Simylus.--Stob.--Horat.--Aristot.--But that which we especially
require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity of reading,
which maketh a full man, not alone enabling him to know the history
or argument of a poem and to report it, but so to master the matter
and style, as to show he knows how to handle, place, or dispose of
either with elegancy when need shall be.
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