"
For "he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to
the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of Art--he, I
say, and his Poetry are not admitted." [6]
But the work of the true poet is immortal.
"For have not the verses of Homer continued 2500 years or more without the
loss of a syllable or a letter, during which time infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not
possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar,
no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the
originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and
truth. But the images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books,
exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation.
Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still
and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing
infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages: so that if the invention
of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities
from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in
participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified,
which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time and make ages so
distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the
one of the other?" [7]
The poet requires many qualifications.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244