ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 115 



acter of style and a certain form of speech not relating to 

 the subject, for a true narration may be delivered in verse 

 and a feigned one in prose; but the second is a capital part 

 of learning, and no other than feigned history. And here, 

 as in our divisions, we endeavor to find and trace the true 

 sources of learning, and this frequently without giving way 

 to custom or the established order we shall take no par 

 ticular notice of satire, elegy, epigram, ode, etc., but turn 

 them over to philosophy and the arts of speech, and under 

 the name of poetry treat nothing more than imaginary 

 history. 



The justest division of poetry, except what it shares in 

 common with history (which has its feigned chronicles, 

 feigned lives, and feigned relations), is 1. Into narrative; 

 2. Dramatic ; and 3. Allegorical. Narrative poetry is such 

 an exact imitation of history as to deceive, did it not 

 often carry things beyond probability. Dramatic poetry is 

 a kind of visible history, giving the images of things as if 

 they were present, while history represents them as past. 

 But allegorical poetry is history with its type, which rep 

 resents intellectual things to the senses. 



Narrative poetry, otherwise called heroic poetry, seems, 

 with regard to its matter, not the versification, raised upon 

 a noble foundation, as having a principal regard to the dig 

 nity of human nature. For as the active world is inferior 

 to the rational soul, so poetry gives that to mankind w^ich 

 history denies, and in some measure satisfies the mind with 

 shadows when it cannot enjoy the substance. For, upon 

 a narrow inspection, poetry strongly shows that a greater 

 grandeur of things, a more perfect order, and a more beau 

 tiful variety is pleasing to the mind than can anywhere be 

 found in nature after the fall. So that, as the actions and 

 events, which are the subjects of true history, have not that 

 grandeur which satisfies the mind, poetry steps in and feigns 

 more heroical actions. And as real history gives us not the 

 success of things according to the deserts of virtue and vice, 

 poetry corrects it, and presents us with the fates and for- 



