102 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Iv.2. 
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 estim- 
ation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other 
learning stood excluded. 
3. The division of poesy which is aptest in the pro- 
priety 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, represent- 
ative, 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 sop, and the 
brief sentences of the seven, and the use of hieroglyphics 
may appear. And the cause was, for that it was then of 
