It is
certain, nor can it with any forehead be opposed, that the too
much license of poetasters in this time, hath much deformed
their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest
ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for
their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice,
either to let the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which
indeed should not be attempted with unclean hands) to fall
under the least contempt. For, if men will impartially, and
not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet,
they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of
any man's being the good poet, without first being a good man.
He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good
disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old
men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to
childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes
forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of
things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can
alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind: this, I
take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise
their railing rhetoric upon.
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