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the deeds; and if words, yet but as inducements and passages to deeds: so are there other books and writings, which are appropriate to the custody and receipt of words only, which likewise are of three sorts; Orations, Letters, and Brief Speeches or Sayings.

Orations are pleadings, speeches of counsel, laudatives, invectives, apologies, reprehensions; orations of formality or ceremony, and the like.

Letters are according to all the variety of occasions, advertisements, advices, directions, proposi tions, petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory; of compliment, of pleasure, of discourse, and all other passages of action. And such as are written from wise men, are of all the words of man, in my judgment, the best; for they are more natural than orations and public speeches, and more advised than conferences or present speeches. So again letters of affairs from such as manage them, or are privy to them, are of all others the best instructions for history, and to a diligent reader the best histories in themselves.

For Apophthegms, it is a great loss of that book of Cæsar's; for as his history, and those few letters of his which we have, and those apophthegms which were of his own, excel all mens else, so I suppose would his collection of apophthegms have done; for as for those which are collected by others, either I have no taste in such matters, or else their choice hath not been happy. But upon these three kinds of writings I do not insist, because I have no defici encies to propound concerning them.

Thus much therefore concerning History, which is that part of learning which answereth to one of the cells, domiciles, or offices of the mind of man, which is that of the Memory.

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 mat

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ter, 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 poëtis, etc. It is taken in two senses, in respect of words, or matter; in the first sense, it is but a character of stile, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the present: in the latter, it is, as hath been said, one of the principal portions of learning, and is nothing else but feigned history, which may be stiled 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 shews 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 rude times and

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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 latter kind of parabolical wisdom was much more in use in the ancient times, as by the fables of Æsop, 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 subtile than the vulgar, in that manner, because men in those times wanted both variety of examples and subtilty 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 and parables.

Of this in divine poesy, we see, the use is authorised. 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, Cœo Enceladoque sororem Progenuit.

Expounded, that when princes and monarchies 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: expouned, 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 ingeniously, but corruptly by Machiavel, 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 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 latter 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 deficience. 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 expression 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. But it is not good to stay too long in the theatre. Let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace of the mind, which we are to approach and view with more reverence and attention.

THE knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation.

The light of nature consisteth in the notions of the mind, and the reports of the senses; for as for knowledge which man receiveth by teaching, it is cumulative and not original, as in a water, that, besides his own spring-head, is fed with other springs and streams. So then, according to these two differing illuminations or originals, knowledge is first of all divided into Divinity and Philosophy.

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to nature, or are reflected or reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine philosophy, Natural philosophy, and Human philosophy or humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character, of the power of God, the difference of nature, and the use of man. But because the distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point; but are like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimension and quantity of intireness and continuance, before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs: therefore it is

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