they may be the staff of their
parents' old age, and the glory of their posterity; and to force them to
study this or that science I do not think wise, though it may be no harm
to persuade them; and when there is no need to study for the sake of pane
lucrando, and it is the student's good fortune that heaven has given him
parents who provide him with it, it would be my advice to them to let him
pursue whatever science they may see him most inclined to; and though
that of poetry is less useful than pleasurable, it is not one of those
that bring discredit upon the possessor. Poetry, gentle sir, is, as I
take it, like a tender young maiden of supreme beauty, to array, bedeck,
and adorn whom is the task of several other maidens, who are all the rest
of the sciences; and she must avail herself of the help of all, and all
derive their lustre from her. But this maiden will not bear to be
handled, nor dragged through the streets, nor exposed either at the
corners of the market-places, or in the closets of palaces. She is the
product of an Alchemy of such virtue that he who is able to practise it,
will turn her into pure gold of inestimable worth. He that possesses her
must keep her within bounds, not permitting her to break out in ribald
satires or soulless sonnets. She must on no account be offered for sale,
unless, indeed, it be in heroic poems, moving tragedies, or sprightly and
ingenious comedies. She must not be touched by the buffoons, nor by the
ignorant vulgar, incapable of comprehending or appreciating her hidden
treasures. And do not suppose, senor, that I apply the term vulgar here
merely to plebeians and the lower orders; for everyone who is ignorant,
be he lord or prince, may and should be included among the vulgar. He,
then, who shall embrace and cultivate poetry under the conditions I have
named, shall become famous, and his name honoured throughout all the
civilised nations of the earth. And with regard to what you say, senor,
of your son having no great opinion of Spanish poetry, I am inclined to
think that he is not quite right there, and for this reason: the great
poet Homer did not write in Latin, because he was a Greek, nor did Virgil
write in Greek, because he was a Latin; in short, all the ancient poets
wrote in the language they imbibed with their mother's milk, and never
went in quest of foreign ones to express their sublime conceptions; and
that being so, the usage should in justice extend to all nations,