It is true what poets have said again and again, that there are women whose mere presence, whose mere look, drives all bad thoughts awaywomen before whom men dare no more speak, or act, nay, even think, basely, than they would dare before the angels of God.

Lucian severely criticises the historians whose writings are like those of the poets.

Quintilian advises students of rhetoric against imitating the style of the historians because it is too much like that of the poets.

Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of the sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets, while the modern student, Norden, asserts that the poets learned from the sophists.

Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of the sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets, while the modern student, Norden, asserts that the poets learned from the sophists.

The evidence at least points to a very marked similarity between the styles of the sophists and of the poets in the fourth century B.C.

And again, in a phrase which was taken up and repeated for fifteen hundred years, the poets are nearest kin to the orators.

Robertelli thought poetic might be either in prose or in verse if it were an imitation; Lucian, Apuleius, and Heliodorus were to him poets.

Lucan is a poet; Livy a historian.[180] Castelvetro probably came nearest to Aristotle in asserting that Lucian and Boccaccio are poets though in prose, although verse is a more fitting garment for poetry than is prose.

In his Discourse Webbe modestly asserts that his purpose in writing is primarily to stir up some one better than he to write on English poetry so that proper criteria of judgment may be established to discern between good writers and bad, and that the poets may thereby be aided in the right practice and orderly course of true poetry.

Gascoigne, Lodge, Spenser, were poets who incidentally wrote on the technic of their art or in defence of its value.

"For boys a school teacher is provided; but we, the poets, are teachers of men.

They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and example.

It was such an educational system which prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of letters.

The basis, indeed, of the Gnostic heresies of the second and third centuries was an allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets and philosophers and of the Scriptures.

When Isidore of Seville (†633 or 636), for instance, was compiling his book of universal knowledge, the Etymologiae, he incorporated his section on the poets in the chapter entitled Concerning the Church and the Sects.

So between a section devoted to the Philosophers of the Gentiles and a section entitled Concerning Sibyls he wrote concerning the poets as follows: Sometimes, however, the poets were called theologians, because they used to compose songs concerning the gods.

So between a section devoted to the Philosophers of the Gentiles and a section entitled Concerning Sibyls he wrote concerning the poets as follows: Sometimes, however, the poets were called theologians, because they used to compose songs concerning the gods.

In doing this, however, it is the office of the poets to render what has actually been done in a different guise with a certain beauty of covert figures.

The poets invent fables sometimes to give pleasure; sometimes they are interpreted to explain the nature of things, sometimes to throw light on the manners of men.

This praise of the poets is complementary to a condemnation of the foolish public, whose limited intelligence prevents them from seeing the cloaked truth of the poets.

This praise of the poets is complementary to a condemnation of the foolish public, whose limited intelligence prevents them from seeing the cloaked truth of the poets.

Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony, the early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to virtue and morality.

Sidney says that the poets "imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move men to take the goodnes in hande ... and teach, to make them know that goodnes whereunto they are mooved."

The Earl of Stirling, in Anacrisis (1634?) acknowledges the works of the poets to be the chief springs of learning, "both for Profit and Pleasure, showing Things as they should be, where Histories represent them as they are."