250 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



nature hath joined,jand so make unlawful matches and 

 divorces of things : Pictoribus atque poetis, etc. It is taken 

 in two senses, 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 later, 

 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. 



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 great- 

 ness, 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 divine- 

 ness, 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 con- 

 gruities 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 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 



