And yet I must say, that as I have more just cause to make a pitiful
defence of poor poetry, which, from almost the highest estimation of
learning, is fallen to be the laughing-stock of children; so have I
need to bring some more available proofs, since the former is by no
man barred of his deserved credit, whereas the silly latter hath had
even the names of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with
great danger of civil war among the Muses. {2}
At first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh
against poetry, may justly be objected, that they go very near to
ungratefulness to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations
and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to
ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled
them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges. And will you play
the hedgehog, that being received into the den, drove out his host?
{3} or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their parents?
{4}
Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show
me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing
else but poets. Nay, let any history he brought that can say any
writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same
skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some others are named, who having been
the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their
knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their
fathers in learning.
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