Is it the lyric that most displeaseth, who with his tuned lyre and
well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to
virtuous acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who
sometimes raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in
singing the lauds of the immortal God? Certainly, I must confess
mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and
Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet;
{55} and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher
voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust
and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the
gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the manner
at all feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of
their ancestors' valour, which that right soldier-like nation think
one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage. The incomparable
Lacedaemonians did not only carry that kind of music ever with them
to the field, but even at home, as such songs were made, so were
they all content to be singers of them; when the lusty men were to
tell what they did, the old men what they had done, and the young
what they would do. And where a man may say that Pindar many times
praiseth highly victories of small moment, rather matters of sport
than virtue; as it may be answered, it was the fault of the poet,
and not of the poetry, so, indeed, the chief fault was in the time
and custom of the Greeks, who set those toys at so high a price,
that Philip of Macedon reckoned a horse-race won at Olympus among
three fearful felicities. But as the inimitable Pindar often did,
so is that kind most capable, and most fit, to awake the thoughts
from the sleep of idleness, to embrace honourable enterprises.

There rests the heroical, {56} whose very name, I think, should