rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.

The division of Poesy which is aptest in the propriety thereof (besides those divisions which are common unto it with History, as feigned chronicles, feigned lives, and the appendices of History, as feigned epistles, feigned orations, and the rest) is into Poesy Narrative, Representative, and Allusive. The Narrative is a mere imitation of History with the excesses before remembered, choosing for subject commonly wars and love, rarely state, and sometimes pleasure or mirth. Representative is as a visible History, and is an image of actions as if they were present, as History is of actions in nature as they are, that is past; Allusive, or Parabolical, is a narration applied only to express some special purpose or conceit: which later kind of parabolical wisdom was much more in use in the ancient times, as by the Fables of Aesop, and the brief sentences of the Seven, and the use of hieroglyphics may appear. And the cause was for that it was then of necessity to express any point of reason which was more sharp or subtle than the vulgar in that manner, because men in those times wanted both variety of examples and subtlety of conceit and as hieroglyphics were before letters, so parables were before arguments and nevertheless now and at all times they do retain much life and vigour, because reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit.

But there remaineth yet another use of Poesy parabolical opposite to that which we last mentioned; for that tendeth to demonstrate and illustrate that which is taught or delivered, and

this other to retire and obscure it: that is, when the secrets and mysteries of Religion, Policy, or Philosophy, are involved in fables or parables. Of this in divine Poesy we see the use is authorized. In heathen Poesy we see the exposition of fables doth fall out sometimes with great felicity, as in the fable that the Giants being overthrown in their war against the Gods, the Earth their mother in revenge thereof brought forth Fame :

Illam terra Parens ira irritata Deorum,

Extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque Sororem
Progenuit:

expounded, that when princes and monarchs have suppressed actual and open rebels, then the malignity of people, which is the mother of Rebellion, doth bring forth libels and slanders, and taxations of the states, which is of the same kind with rebellion, but more feminine: so in the fable that the rest of the gods having conspired to bind Jupiter, Pallas called Briareus with his hundred hands to his aid, expounded, that monarchies need not fear any curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as long as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who will be sure to come in on their side: so in the fable that Achilles was brought up under Chiron the Centaur, who was part a man and part a beast, expounded ingenuously but corruptly by Machiavell, that it belongeth to the education and discipline of princes to know as well how to play the part of the lion in violence and the fox in guile, as of the man in virtue and justice. Nevertheless, in many the like encounters, I do rather think that the fable was first and the exposition devised than that the moral was first and thereupon the fable framed. For I find it was

an ancient vanity in Chrysippus that troubled himself with great contention to fasten the assertions of the Stoics upon the fictions of the ancient poets: but yet that all the fables and fictions of the poets were but pleasure and not figure, I interpose no opinion. Surely of those poets which are now extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding he was made a kind of Scripture by the later schools of the Grecians), yet I should without any difficulty pronounce that his fables had no such inwardness in his own meaning: but what they might have, upon a more original tradition, is not easy to affirm, for he was not the inventor of many of them. In this third part of Learning which is Poesy, I can report no deficiency. For being as a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and spread abroad, more than any other kind : but to ascribe unto it that which is due for the expressing of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are beholden to Poets more than to the Philosophers' works, and for wit and eloquence not much less than to Orators' harangues.

BEN JONSON

Extracts from TIMBER, OR DISCOVERIES

(1620-35)

i. De Shakespeare nostrat

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I REMEMBER the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand,' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. Sufflaminandus erat,' as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so, too! Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, ' Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, Caesar did never wrong but with just cause; and such like, which were ridiculous. But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.

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ii. Ingeniorum Discrimina

It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes, it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests and their sentences, which they only and ambitiously seek for, stick out and are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. Now because they speak all they can, however unfitly, they are thought to have the greater copy. Where the

learned use ever election and a mean they look back to what they intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body. The true artificer will not run away from Nature, as he were afraid of her, or depart from life and the likeness of Truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime perhaps he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgement, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. gratulates them and their fortune. Another age or juster men will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his subtilty in

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