No More Learning

Serve the first well,
and the rest will serve you.

_De Poetica_. --We have spoken sufficiently of oratory, let us now make a
diversion to poetry. Poetry, in the primogeniture, had many peccant
humours, and is made to have more now, through the levity and inconstancy
of men's judgments. Whereas, indeed, it is the most prevailing
eloquence, and of the most exalted caract. Now the discredits and
disgraces are many it hath received through men's study of depravation or
calumny; their practice being to give it diminution of credit, by
lessening the professor's estimation, and making the age afraid of their
liberty; and the age is grown so tender of her fame, as she calls all
writings aspersions.

That is the state word, the phrase of court (placentia college), which
some call Parasites place, the Inn of Ignorance.

_D. Hieronymus_. --Whilst I name no persons, but deride follies, why should
any man confess or betray himself why doth not that of S. Hierome come
into their mind, _Ubi generalis est de vitiis disputatio_, _ibi nullius
esse personae injuriam_? {133a} Is it such an inexpiable crime in poets
to tax vices generally, and no offence in them, who, by their exception
confess they have committed them particularly? Are we fallen into those
times that we must not--

"Auriculas teneras mordaci rodere vero. " {133b}

_Remedii votum semper verius erat_, _quam spes_. {133c}--_Sexus faemin_.
--If
men may by no means write freely, or speak truth, but when it offends
not, why do physicians cure with sharp medicines, or corrosives? is not
the same equally lawful in the cure of the mind that is in the cure of
the body? Some vices, you will say, are so foul that it is better they
should be done than spoken. But they that take offence where no name,
character, or signature doth blazon them seem to me like affected as
women, who if they hear anything ill spoken of the ill of their sex, are
presently moved, as if the contumely respected their particular; and on
the contrary, when they hear good of good women, conclude that it belongs
to them all. If I see anything that toucheth me, shall I come forth a
betrayer of myself presently? No, if I be wise, I'll dissemble it; if
honest, I'll avoid it, lest I publish that on my own forehead which I saw
there noted without a title. A man that is on the mending hand will
either ingenuously confess or wisely dissemble his disease. And the wise
and virtuous will never think anything belongs to themselves that is
written, but rejoice that the good are warned not to be such; and the ill
to leave to be such. The person offended hath no reason to be offended
with the writer, but with himself; and so to declare that properly to
belong to him which was so spoken of all men, as it could be no man's
several, but his that would wilfully and desperately claim it. It
sufficeth I know what kind of persons I displease, men bred in the
declining and decay of virtue, betrothed to their own vices; that have
abandoned or prostituted their good names; hungry and ambitious of
infamy, invested in all deformity, enthralled to ignorance and malice, of
a hidden and concealed malignity, and that hold a concomitancy with all
evil.



_What is a Poet_?


_Poeta_. --A poet is that which by the Greeks is called ? ? ? ?