A Defence of Poesie and Poems

PHILIP SIDNEY was born at Penshurst, in Kent, on the 29th of November, 1554. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, had married Mary, eldest daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberla...

There rests the heroical, {56} whose very name, I think, should daunt all backbiters. For by what conceit can a tongue be directed to speak evil of that which draweth with him n...

Plato, therefore, whose authority I had much rather justly construe than unjustly resist, meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith, “qua auth...

But what! methinks I deserve to be pounded {94} for straying from poetry to oratory: but both have such an affinity in the wordish considerations, that I think this digression w...

_Dick_. Ah Will, though I grudge not, I count it feeble glee, With sight made dim with daily tears another’s sport to see. Whoever lambkins saw, yet lambkins love to play, To pl...

But now may it be alleged, that if this managing of matters be so fit for the imagination, then must the historian needs surpass, who brings you images of true matters, such as,...

But {11} now let us see how the Greeks have named it, and how they deemed of it. The Greeks named him ποιητὴν, which name hath, as the most excellent, gone through other languag...

NEAR Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found, But so confused, that neither any eye Can count them just, nor Reason reason try, What force brought them to so unlikely ground.