you which is fittest for the eye to see; as the constant, though
lamenting look of Lucretia, when she punished in herself another's
fault; wherein he painteth not Lucretia, whom he never saw, but
painteth the outward beauty of such a virtue. For these three be
they which most properly do imitate to teach and delight; and to
imitate, borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be; but
range only, reined with learned discretion, into the divine
consideration of what may be, and should be. These be they, that,
as the first and most noble sort, may justly be termed "vates;" so
these are waited on in the excellentest languages and best
understandings, with the fore-described name of poets. For these,
indeed, do merely make to imitate, and imitate both to delight and
teach, and delight to move men to take that goodness in hand, which,
without delight they would fly as from a stranger; and teach to make
them know that goodness whereunto they are moved; which being the
noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed, yet want
there not idle tongues to bark at them.

These {21} be subdivided into sundry more special denominations; the
most notable be the heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, satyric, iambic,
elegiac, pastoral, and certain others; some of these being termed
according to the matter they deal with; some by the sort of verse
they like best to write in; for, indeed, the greatest part of poets
have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of
writing which is called verse. Indeed, but apparelied verse, being
but an ornament, and no cause to poetry, since there have been many
most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many
versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. {22} For
Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem
justi imperii, the portraiture of a just of Cyrus, as Cicero saith