that after twenty years to remove you to the court, and to make you a privy counsellor. If you should neglect your castle, and refuse to eat of those fruits, and sit down and whine and wish you were a privy counsellor, do you think the king would be pleased with you?

SELDEN.

PLEASURES of meat, drink, clothes, &c. are forbidden those that know not how to use them. Just as nurses cry, Pah! when they see a knife in a child's hand; they will never say any thing to

a man.

POETRY.

IBID.

Poets, like lovers, should be bold, and dare;
They spoil their business with an over care:
And he who servilely creeps after sense
Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence:
And though he stumble in a full career,
Yet rashness is a better fault than fear.

DRYDEN.'

IF it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth 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.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

IT is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown maketh an advocate, who, though he pleaded in armour, should be an advocate and no soldier; but it is that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching, which must be the right describing note to know a poet by.

IBID.

ONE may be a poet without versifying, and a versifier without poetry.

IBID.

POETRY is of all human learnings the most ancient, and of most fatherly antiquity, as from whence, other learnings have taken their beginnings; since it is so universal, that no learned nation doth despise it, nor barbarous nation is without it; since both Roman and Greek gave such divine names unto it, the one of prophesying, the other of making; and that indeed that name of making is fit for him, considering that where all other arts retain themselves within their subject, and receive, as it were, their being from it; the poet only, only bringeth his own stuff, and

doth not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh matter for a conceit. Since neither his description nor end containeth any evil, the thing described cannot be evil; since his effects be so good as to teach goodness, and delight the learners of it; since therein (namely, in moral doctrine, the chief of all knowledges) he doth not only far pass the historian, but for instructing is well nigh comparable to the philosopher, for moving, leaveth him behind him. Since the holy scriptures (wherein there is no uncleanness) hath whole parts in it poetical, and that even our Saviour, Christ, vouchsafed to use the flowers of it: since all his kindnesses are not only in their united forms, but in their severed dissections fully commendable. I think, (and think I think rightly) the laurel crown appointed for triumphant captains, doth worthily, of all other learnings, honour the poet's triumph.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY,

THE prophet David having singular knowledge, not in poetry alone, but in music also, judged them both to be things most necessary for the house of God, left behind him to that purpose, a number of divinely indited poems, and was farther the author of adding unto poetry, melody in public prayer; melody, both vocal and instrumental, for the raising up of men's hearts, and the sweetening of their affections towards God. In which considerations, the church of Christ doth likewise, at this present day, retain it as an orna

ment to God's service, and an help to our own devotion.

They must have hearts very dry and tough, from whom the melody of the psalms doth not sometime draw that wherein a mind religiously affected, delighteth.

HOOKER.

THERE is no reason plays should be in verse, either in blank or rhyme; only the poet has to say for himself, that he makes something like that which somebody made before him. The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was sung to music, otherwise it had been a senseless, thing to have fettered up themselves.

SELDEN.

POPERY.

Bloated with ambition, pride, and avarice,
You swell to counsel kings, and govern kingdoms.
Content you with monopolizing heav'n,

And let this little hanging ball alone.

For give you but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.

DRYDEN.

HOLLOW church papists are like the roots of nettle, which themselves sting not; but yet they bear all the stinging leaves.

LORD BACON.

BEFORE a juggler's tricks are discovered, we admire him and give him money, but afterwards, we care not for them; so it was before the discovery of the juggling of the church of Rome.

SELDEN.

ONE of the church of Rome will not come to our prayers: does that agree he doth not like them? I would fain see a catholic leave his dinner, because a nobleman's chaplain says grace; nor haply would he leave the prayers of the church, if going to church were not made a mark of distinction between a protestant and a papist.