A Defence of Poesie and Poems |
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abused Æneas Aristotle beasts beauty bodies three bringeth cause Cicero cometh conceit Crantor Critias cruel Cyrus Dares Phrygius death Defence of Poesie delight deridan desire Dick disdain divine doth ears earth Edmund Spenser Euphuism evil excellent eyes fair fancy father fault fear feigned Fulke Greville George Buchanan give giveth Gorboduc Greeks hath hear hearts and hands heaven heavenly historian honour Hubert Languet imitation Join hearts knowledge laugh laughter learning live maketh man's wit matter mind in bodies misliked mistress Mopsa move nature never pain passions perchance Philip Sidney philosopher Phocylides Pindar Plato Plutarch poetical poetry poets Polydorus praise reason rhyme saith scornful Sidney's Sir Philip Sidney song sonnets soul do sing speak sweet teach teacheth tell thee things thou thought tragedy true truly truth unto verse virtue wherein words worthy write Xenophon
Popular passages
Page 58 - ... with a tale, forsooth; he cometh unto you, with a tale, which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney-corner; and, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue ; even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste...
Page 108 - By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
Page 108 - Now, of time they are much more liberal, for ordinary it is that two young princes fall in love. After many traverses, she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man, falls in love, and is ready to get another child, and all this in two hours...
Page 27 - Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. But let those things alone and go to man, for whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is...
Page 27 - Neither let this be jestingly conceived, because the works of the one be essential, the other, in imitation or fiction ; for any understanding knoweth the skill of the artificer standeth in that idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself.
Page 71 - I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung...
Page 36 - ... crooked heart ; then lo ! did proof, the overruler of opinions, make manifest that all these are but serving sciences, which, as they have a private end in themselves, so yet are they all directed to the highest end of the mistress knowledge, by the Greeks called ap\1TeKrov1K>i, which stands, as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self; in the ethic and politic consideration, with the end of well doing, and not of well knowing only...
Page 109 - Nuntius," to recount things done in former time, or other place. Lastly, if they will represent an history, they must not, as Horace saith, begin " ab ovo," but they must come to the principal point of that one action which they will represent. By example this will be best expressed ; I have a story of young Polydorus, delivered, for safety's sake, with great riches, by his father Priamus to Polymnestor, King of Thrace, in the Trojan war time.
Page 83 - What child is there that, coming to a play, and seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes?
Page 57 - Now therein of all sciences — I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit — is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into -the way as will entice any man to enter int - it.