Abuse_, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who
had cut himself off from the joys of sense. Because champions of poetry
were concerned with answering this attack, the bulk of Elizabethan
criticism, that of Lodge, [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry, Musick and
Stage Plays._] Harrington, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] Meres,
[Footnote: _Palladis Tamia._] Campion, [Footnote: _Observations in the
Art of English Poetry._] Daniel, [Footnote: _Defense of Rhyme._] and
even in lesser degree of Sidney, obscures the aesthetic problem by
turning it into an ethical one.

In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a
recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers. He asserts
his spiritual pre-eminence strongly, declaring that the poet, unlike the
scientist, is not bound to the physical world.[Footnote: "He is not
bound to any such subjection, as scientists, to nature." _Defense of
Poetry._] On the other hand he is clearly aware of the need for a
sensuous element in poetry, since by it, Sidney declares, the poet may
lead men by "delight" to follow the forms of virtue.

The next critic of note, Dryden, in his revulsion from the ascetic
character which the puritans would develop in the poet, swung too far to
the other extreme, and threw the poetic character out of balance by
belittling its spiritual insight. He did justice to the physical element
in poetry, defining poetic drama, the type of his immediate concern, as
"a just and lively image of human nature, in its actions, passions, and
traverses of fortune," [Footnote: _English Garner,_ III, 513.] but
he appears to have felt the ideal aspect of the poet's nature as merely
a negation of the sensual, so that he was driven to the absurdity of
recommending a purely mechanical device, rhyme, as a means of elevating
poetry above the sordid plane of "a bare imitation." In the eighteenth