He could songes make, and wel endite. -CHAUCER, GEOFFREY, 1387-93? Canterbury Tales.

Having bene in all ages, and even amongst the most barbarous, always of singular accounpt and honour, and being indede so worthy and commendable an arte; or rather no arte, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct not to bee gotten by laboure and learning, but adorned with both; and poured into the witte by a certain 'Evovoraσμós and cellestial inspiration.-SPENSER, EDMUND, 1579, The Shepherd's Calendar, Argument, Oct.

Nature never let forth the earth in so rich tapistry, as divers Poets have done, neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers: nor whatsoever els may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brasen; the Poets only deliver a golden.-SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, 1595, An Apologie for Poetrie. I had rather be a kitten, and cry-mew, Than one of these same metre balladmongers;

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on an axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on
edge,

Nothing so much as mincing poetry;
'Tis like the forc'd gait of a shuffling nag.
-SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 1596–97, King
Henry IV., Part I, Act iii, Sc. i.

When Heav'n would strive to do the best it

can,

And puts an Angel's Spirit into a Man, The utmost power in that great work doth spend

When to the World a Poet it doth intend.

A verse may finde him who a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice. -HERBERT, GEORGE, 1633, The Temple, Church Porch.

Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower: The great Emathian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower

Went to the ground; and the repeated air Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. MILTON, JOHN, 1642, When the Assault was intended to the City.

For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their

courses.

-BUTLER, SAMUEL, 1663, Hudibras.

. . the fate of verses, always prized
With admiration, or as much despised;
Men will be less indulgent to their faults,
And patience have to cultivate their thoughts,
Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what they discreetly blot;
Finding new words, that to the ravished ear
May like the language of the gods appear,
Such as, of old, wise bards employed, to make
Unpolished men their wild retreats fórsake;
Law-giving heroes, famed for taming brutes,
And raising cities, with their charming lutes;
For rudest minds with harmony were caught,
And civil life was by the Muses taught.
-WALLER, EDMUND, 1670, Upon the Earl
of Roscommon's Translation of Horace "de
Arte Poetica."

Fame from science, not from fortune, draws.
So poetry, which is in Oxford made
An art, in London only is a trade.
There haughty dunces, whose unlearned pen
Could ne'er spell grammar, would be read-
ing men.

Such build their poems the Lucretian way;
So many huddled atoms make a play;
And if they hit in order by some chance,
They call that nature which is ignorance.

Heroical Epistles.

It was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind. BACON, FRANCIS LORD, 1605, Advancement of Learning, bk. ii.

University of Oxford.

True Poets are the Guardians of a State, And, when they fail, portend approaching Fate.

For that which Rome to conquest did inspire, Was not the Vestal, but the Muses' fire. -ROSCOMMON, EARL OF, 1684, An Essay on Translated Verse.