homines, non Di"--"Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have
admitted mediocrity in poets."

{34} The moral common-places. Common Place, "Locus communis," was
a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy
sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or
adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a
text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., "Because it is
impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that
give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of
books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobaeus out of
Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled
'Polyanthea,' provides short and effective sentences apt to any
matter." Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good
quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, "a common-place,"
came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting,
and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but
commonly without wit in it.

{35} Thus far Aristotle. The whole passage in the "Poetics" runs:
"It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet
are distinguished. The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it
would still be a species of History, no less with metre than
without. They are distinguished by this, that the one relates what
has been, the other what might be. On this account Poetry is more
philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry
is chiefly conversant about general truth; History about particular.
In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would
speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is
the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names.