A Defence of Poesie and Poems Part 12

"Conscia mens recti famae mendacia risit: Sed nos in vitium credula turba sumus."

A mind conscious of right laughs at the falsehoods of fame but towards vice we are a credulous crowd.

{63} The chief objections.

{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, infecting us with wanton and pestilent desires.

{68} Rampire, rampart, the Old French form 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 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 cannot understand why it is that his thoughts flow abundantly when he talks of Homer. "I can explain," says Socrates; "your talent in expounding Homer is not an art acquired by system and method, 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 cannot compose verses at all so long as his reason remains within him. The Muses take away his reason, subst.i.tuting in place of it their own divine inspiration and special impulse . . .

Like prophets and deliverers of oracles, these poets have their reason taken away, and become the servants of the G.o.ds. It is not they who, bereft of their reason, speak in such sublime strains, it is the G.o.d who speaks to us, and speaks through them." George Grote, from whose volumes on Plato I quote this translation of the pa.s.sage, placed "Ion" among the genuine dialogues of Plato.

{73} Guards, tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs or facings.

{74} The Second Summary.

{75} Causes of Defect in English Poetry.

{76} From the invocation at the opening of Virgil's 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 Chancellor, Michel de l'Hopital, born in 1505, who joined to his great political services (which included 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 t.i.tan (Prometheus) fastened with a better clay. (Juvenal, Sat. xiv. 35). Dryden translated the line, with its context -

"Some sons, indeed, some very few, we see Who keep themselves from this infection free, Whom gracious Heaven for n.o.bler ends designed, Their looks erected, and their clay refined."

{79} The orator is made, the poet born.

{80} What you will; the first that comes.

{81} "Whatever I shall try to write will be verse." Sidney quotes from memory, and adapts to his context, Tristium IV. x. 26.

"Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, Et quod temptabam dicere, versus erat."

{82} HIS for "its" here as throughout; the word "its" not being yet introduced into English writing.

{83} Defects in the Drama. It should be remembered that this was written when the English drama was but twenty years old, and Shakespeare, aged about seventeen, had not yet come to London. The strongest of Shakespeare's precursors had not yet begun to write for the stage. Marlowe had not yet written; and the strength that was to come of the freedom of the English drama had yet to be shown.

{84} There was no scenery 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 hara.s.s the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest."

{89} George Bachanan (who died in 1582, aged seventy-six) had written in earlier life four Latin tragedies, when Professor of Humanities at Bordeaux, with Montaigne in his cla.s.s.

{90} Defects in Lyric Poetry.

{91} Defects in Diction. 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 commonplace books of quotable pa.s.sages, so called because an Italian grammarian, Marius Nizolius, born at Bersello in the fifteenth century, and one of the scholars of the Renaissance in the sixteenth, was one of the first producers of such volumes. His contribution was an alphabetical folio dictionary of phrases from Cicero: "Thesaurus Ciceronia.n.u.s, sive Apparatus Linguae Latinae e scriptis Tullii Ciceronis collectus."

{93} "He lives and wins, nay, comes to the Senate, nay, comes 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