counterfeit. But the greatest hinderer to our proceedings and the reformation of our errors is this self-love, whereunto we versifiers are ever noted to be specially subject; a disease of all other the most dangerous and incurable, being once seated in the spirits, for which there is no cure but only by a spiritual remedy. Multos puto ad sapientiam potuisse pervenire, nisi putassent se pervenisse and this opinion of our sufficiency makes so great a crack in our judgement, as it will hardly ever hold anything of worth. Caecus amor sui; and though it would seem to see all without it, yet certainly it discerns but little within. For there is not the simplest writer that will ever tell himself he doth ill, but, as if he were the parasite only to sooth his own doings, persuades him that his lines cannot but please others which so much delight himself: Suffenus est quisque sibi -neque idem unquam Aeque est beatus, ac poema cum scribit. And the more to show that he is so, we shall see him evermore in all places, and to all persons repeating his own compositions; and Quem vero arripuit, tenet, occiditque legendo. Next to this deformity stands our affectation, wherein we always betray ourselves to be both unkind and unnatural to our own native language, in disguising or forging strange or unusual words, as if it were to make our verse seem another kind of speech out of the course of our usual practice, displacing our words, or inventing new, only upon a singularity, when our own accustomed phrase, set in the due place, would express us more familiarly and to better delight than all this idle affectation of antiquity or novelty can ever do. And I cannot but wonder at the strange presumption of some men, that dare so audaciously adventure to introduce any whatsoever foreign words, be they never so strange, and of themselves, as it were, without a parliament, without any consent or allowance, establish them as free denizens in our language. But this is but a character of that perpetual revolution which we see to be in all things that never remain the same and we must herein be content to submit ourselves to the law of time, which in few years will make all that for which we now contend nothing. FRANCIS BACON THE NATURE OF POETRY [From The Advancement of Learning, Book II, 1605] THE parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man's understanding, which is the seat of learning: History to his memory, Poesy to his imagination, and Philosophy to his reason. Divine learning receiveth the same distribution, for the spirit of man is the same, though the revelation of oracle and sense be diverse : SO as Theology consisteth also of History of the Church, of Parables, which is Divine Poesy, and of holy Doctrine or Precept. For as for that part which seemeth supernumerary, which is Prophecy, it is but Divine History, which hath that prerogative over human as the narration may be before the fact as well as after. History is natural, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary, whereof the three first I allow as extant, the fourth I note as deficient. For no man hath propounded to himself the general state of learning to be described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of Nature and the State civil and ecclesiastical, without which the History of the world seemeth to me to be as the statua of Polyphemus with his eye out, that part being wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of the person. And yet I am not ignorant that in divers particular sciences, as of the Juriscon sults, the Mathematicians, the Rhetoricians, the Philosophers, there are set down some small memorials of the schools, authors, and books; and so likewise some barren relations touching the invention of arts or usages. But a just story of learning, containing the antiquities and originals of knowledges and their sects, their inventions, their traditions, their diverse administrations and managings, their flourishings, their oppositions, decays, depressions, oblivions, removes, with the causes and occasions of them, and all other events concerning learning throughout the ages of the world, I may truly affirm to be wanting. The use and end of which work I do not so much design for curiosity or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of learning, but chiefly for a more serious and grave purpose, which is this in few words, that it will make learned men wise in the use and administration of learning. For it is not Saint Augustine's nor Saint Ambrose's works that will make so wise a divine as Ecclesiastical History thoroughly read and observed, and the same reason is of Learning. Poesy is a part of Learning in measure of words for the most part restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly refer to the imagination, which, being not tied to the laws of matter, may at pleasure join that which Nature hath severed, and sever that which Nature hath joined, and so make unlawful matches and divorces of things: Pictoribus atque Poetis, &c. It is taken in two senses in respect of words or matter. In the first sense it is but a character of style, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the present. In the later it is, as hath been said, one of the principal portions of learning, and is nothing else but FEIGNED HISTORY; which may be styled as well in prose as in verse. The use of this FEIGNED HISTORY hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true History have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, Poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true History propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore Poesy feigns them more just in retribution and more according to revealed Providence; because true History representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore Poesy endueth them with more rareness and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that Poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in |