{1}Edward Wotton,elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton.He was knighted by Elizabeth in 1592,and made Comptroller of her Household.Observe the playfulness in Sidney's opening and close of a treatise written throughout in plain,manly English without Euphuism,and strictly reasoned.
{2}Here the introduction ends,and the argument begins with its Part 1.Poetry the first Light-giver.
{3}A fable from the "Hetamythium"of Laurentius Abstemius,Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino,and Librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo under the Pontificate of Alexander VI.(1492-1503).
{4}Pliny says ("Nat.Hist.,"lib.xi.,cap.62)that the young vipers,impatient to be born,break through the side of their mother,and so kill her.
{5}Part 2.Borrowed from by Philosophers.
{6}Timaeus,the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri,and the Athenian Critias are represented by Plato as having listened to the discourse of Socrates on a Republic.Socrates calls on them to show such a state in action.Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the ancient citizens of Attica,10,000years before,from an inroad of countless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis,in the Western Ocean;a struggle of which record was preserved in the temple of Naith or Athene at Sais,in Egypt,and handed down,through Solon,by family tradition to Critias.But first Timaeus agrees to expound the structure of the universe;then Critias,in a piece left unfinished by Plato,proceeds to show an ideal society in action against pressure of a danger that seems irresistible.
{7}Plato's "Republic,"book ii.
{8}Part 3.Borrowed from by Historians.
{9}Part 4.Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic.
{10}Part 5.And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David.
{11}Part 6.By the Greeks,Poets were honoured with the name of Makers.
{12}Poetry is the one creative art.Astronomers and others repeat what they find.
{13}Poets improve Nature.
{14}And idealize man.
{15}Here a Second Part of the Essay begins.
{16}Part 1.Poetry defined.
{17}Part 2.Its kinds.a.Divine.
{18}Philosophical,which is perhaps too imitative.
{19}Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy,of which five books on the fixed stars remain.
{20}Poetry proper.
{21}Part 3.Subdivisions of Poetry proper.
{22}Its essence is in the thought,not in apparelling of verse.
{23}Heliodorus was Bishop of Tricca,in Thessaly,and lived in the fourth century.His story of Theagenes and Chariclea,called the "AEthiopica,"was a romantic tale in Greek which was,in Elizabeth's reign,translated into English.
{24}The Poet's Work and Parts.Part 1.WORK:What Poetry does for us.
{25}Their clay lodgings -
"Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in,we cannot hear it."(Shakespeare,"Merchant of Venice,"act v.,sc.1){26}Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning,virtuous action.
{27}Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy.
{28}It's advantage herein over History.
{29}"All men make faults,and even I in this,Authorising thy trespass with compare."Shakespeare,"Sonnet"35.
{30}"Witness of the times,light of truth,life of memory,mistress of life,messenger of antiquity."--Cicero,"De Oratore."{31}In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher,Historian,and all others (bating comparison with the Divine).
{32}He is beyond the Philosopher.
{33}Horace's "Ars Poetica,"lines 372-3.But Horace wrote "Non homines,non Di"--"Neither men,gods,nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets."{34}The moral common-places.Common Place,"Locus communis,"was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse;but said Keckermann,whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I.and Charles I.,"Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors,there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places,like that collected by Stobaeus out of Cicero,Seneca,Terence,Aristotle;but especially the book entitled 'Polyanthea,'provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter."Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed;the term of rhetoric,"a common-place,"came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting,and then in common speech,any trite saying good or bad,but commonly without wit in it.
{35}Thus far Aristotle.The whole passage in the "Poetics"runs:
"It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet are distinguished.The work of Herodotus might be versified;but it would still be a species of History,no less with metre than without.They are distinguished by this,that the one relates what has been,the other what might be.On this account Poetry is more philosophical,and a more excellent thing than History,for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general truth;History about particular.
In what manner,for example,any person of a certain character would speak or act,probably or necessarily,this is general;and this is the object of Poetry,even while it makes use of particular names.
But what Alcibiades did,or what happened to him,this is particular truth."{36}Justinus,who lived in the second century,made an epitome of the history of the Assyrian,Persian,Grecian,Macedonian,and Roman Empires,from Trogus Pompeius,who lived in the time of Augustus.
{37}Dares Phrygius was supposed to have been a priest of Vulcan,who was in Troy during the siege,and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to him as early as the time of AElian,A.D.230,was supposed,therefore,to be older than Homer's.
{38}Quintus Curtius,a Roman historian of uncertain date,who wrote the history of Alexander the Great in ten books,of which two are lost and others defective.
{39}Not knowledge but practice.
