The Idea of Literature [antikvár]

Now then go we to the most important imputations laid to the poor poets. For aught I can yet learn, they are these: first, that there being many other more fruitful knowledges, man might better spend his time in them than in this; secondly, that it is the mother of lies;* thirdly, that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires, with a siren's sweetness drawing the mind to the serpent's tail of sinful fancies (and herein especially comedies give the largest field to ear,* as Chaucer says); how both in other nations and in ours, before poets did soften us, we were full of courage, given to martial exercises, the pillars of manlike liberty and not lulled asleep in shady idleness with poets1 pastimes; and lastly and chiefly, they cry out with open mouth (as if they had overshot Robin Hood) that Plató banished them out of his commonweaith.* Truly this is much, if there be much truth in it. First to the first. That a man might better spend his time is a reason indeed. but it does, as they say. but beg the question. For if it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as that which teaches and moves to virtue and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as poesy, then is the conclusion manifest that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed. And certainly, though a man should grant their first assumption, it should follow, methinks, very unwillingly that good is not good because better is better. But I still and utterly deny that there is sprung out of earth a more fruitful knowledge. To the second, therefore, that they should be the principal liars, I answer paradoxically (but truly, 1 think truly) that of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar and, though he would, as a poet can scarcely be a liar. The astronomer, with his cousin the geometrician, can hardly escape when they take upon them to measure the height of the stars. How often, think you, do the physicians lie when they aver things good for sicknesses which afterwards send Charon a great number of souls drowned in a potion before they come to his fény?* And no less of the rest which take upon them to affirm. Now for the poet, he nothing affirms and therefore never lies, for, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is falsé. So as the other artists, and especially the histórián, affirming many things, can in the cloudy knowledge of mankind hardly escape from many lies. But the poet, as I said before, never affirms. The poet never makes any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to