And, therefore, though he recount
things not true, yet because he telleth them not for true he lieth
not; without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech, before
alleged, to David; which, as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think
I none so simple would say, that AEsop lied in the tales of his
beasts; for who thinketh that AEsop wrote it for actually true, were
well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth
of. What child is there that cometh to a play, and seeing Thebes
written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is
Thebes? If then a man can arrive to the child's age, to know that
the poet's persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and
not stories what have been, they will never give the lie to things
not affirmatively, but allegorically and figuratively written; and
therefore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away full
fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, looking but for fiction, they
shall use the narration but as an imaginative ground-plot of a
profitable invention.
But hereto is replied, that the poets give names to men they write
of, which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being
true, proveth a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie then, when,
under the names of John of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he
putteth his case? But that is easily answered, their naming of men
is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any
history.
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