62 BACON 



CHAPTER XIII 



The Second leading Branch of Learning Poetry. Its Division into 

 Narrative, Dramatic, and Parabolic. Three Examples of the latter 

 species detailed 



Poetry is a kind of learning generally confined to the measure 

 of words, but otherwise extremely licentious, and truly belong- 

 ing to the imagination, which, being unrestrained by laws, may 

 make what unnatural mixtures and separations it pleases. It 

 is taken in two senses, or with respect to words and matter. 

 The first is but a character 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 particular 

 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 com- 

 mon with history (which has its feigned chronicles, feigned 

 lives, and feigned relations), is I. Into narrative ; 2. Dramatic ; 

 and, 3. Allegorical. Narrative poetry is such an exact imita- 

 tion of history as to deceive, did it not often carry things beyond 

 probability. Dramatic poetry is a kind of visible history, giv- 

 ing the images of things as if they were present, whilst history 

 represents them as past. But allegorical poetry is history with 

 its type, which represents intellectual things to the senses. 



Narrative poetry, otherwise called heroic poetry, seems, with 

 regard to this matter, not the versification, raised upon a noble 

 foundation, as having a principal regard to the dignity of human 

 nature. For as the active world is inferior to the rational soul, 

 so poetry gives that to mankind which 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 beautiful 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 



