90 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



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 

 latter 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. 



2. 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 mag 

 nanimity, 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 con 

 sort it hath with music, it hath had access and estima 

 tion 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, 



