No More Learning

Now the
poesy is the habit or the art; nay, rather the queen of arts, which had
her original from heaven, received thence from the Hebrews, and had in
prime estimation with the Greeks transmitted to the Latins and all
nations that professed civility. The study of it (if we will trust
Aristotle) offers to mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well
and happily, disposing us to all civil offices of society. 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_. --_Seneca_. --_Plato_. --_Aristotle_. --_Helicon_. --_Pegasus_. --
_Parnassus_. --_Ovid_. --First, we require in our poet or maker (for that
title our language affords him elegantly with the Greek) a goodness of
natural wit.
For whereas all other arts consist of doctrine and
precepts, the poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the
treasure of his mind, and as Seneca saith, _Aliquando secundum
Anacreontem insanire jucundum esse_; by which he understands the poetical
rapture. And according to that of Plato, _Frustra poeticas fores sui
compos pulsavit_. And of Aristotle, _Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura
dementiae fuit_. _Nec potest grande aliquid_, _et supra caeteros loqui_,
_nisi mota mens_. Then it riseth higher, as by a divine instinct, when
it contemns common and known conceptions. It utters somewhat above a
mortal mouth. Then it gets aloft and flies away with his rider, whither
before it was doubtful to ascend. This the poets understood by their
Helicon, Pegasus, or Parnassus; and this made Ovid to boast,

"Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo
Sedibus aethereis spiritus ille venit. " {139a}

_Lipsius_. --_Petron. in. Fragm_. --And Lipsius to affirm, _Scio_, _poetam
neminem praestantem fuisse_, _sine parte quadam uberiore divinae aurae_.
And hence it is that the coming up of good poets (for I mind not
mediocres or imos) is so thin and rare among us. Every beggarly
corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs yearly; but _Solus
rex_, _aut poeta_, _non quotannis nascitur_. To this perfection of
nature in our poet we require exercise of those parts, and frequent.