jane eyre personality
Apology for Poetry
Occasion
The Apology was provoked by the Puritanical attack on poesy by Stephen Gosson’s 1579 The Schoole of Abuse
“having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation” 326
“And first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh against poetry, may justly be objected that they go very near to ungratefulness to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to ignorance” 327 The Classics
“Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets” 327
“for not only in time they had this priority (although in itself antiquity be venerable), but went before them, as causes to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge.” 327
Philosophy and poetry
“This did so notably show itself, that the philosophers of Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but under the masks of poets.” 327
“even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most of poetry” 328
History and poetry
“And even historiographers (although their lips sound of things done, and verity be written in their foreheads) have been glad to borrow both fashion and perchance weight of poets. …· the many particularities of battles, which no man could affirm; or, if that be denied me, long orations put in the mouths of great kings and captains, which it is certain they never pronounced.” 328
The Passport of poetry
“So that truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgments if they had not taken a great passport of poetry, which, in all nations at this day where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen;
Occasion
The Apology was provoked by the Puritanical attack on poesy by Stephen Gosson’s 1579 The Schoole of Abuse
“having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you in the defence of that my unelected vocation” 326
“And first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh against poetry, may justly be objected that they go very near to ungratefulness to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to ignorance” 327 The Classics
“Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets” 327
“for not only in time they had this priority (although in itself antiquity be venerable), but went before them, as causes to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge.” 327
Philosophy and poetry
“This did so notably show itself, that the philosophers of Greece durst not a long time appear to the world but under the masks of poets.” 327
“even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most of poetry” 328
History and poetry
“And even historiographers (although their lips sound of things done, and verity be written in their foreheads) have been glad to borrow both fashion and perchance weight of poets. …· the many particularities of battles, which no man could affirm; or, if that be denied me, long orations put in the mouths of great kings and captains, which it is certain they never pronounced.” 328
The Passport of poetry
“So that truly, neither philosopher nor historiographer could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgments if they had not taken a great passport of poetry, which, in all nations at this day where learning flourisheth not, is plain to be seen;