._

Then as there was no art in the world till by experience found
out: so if Poesie be now an Art, & of al antiquitie hath bene among
the Greeks and Latines, & yet were none, vntill by studious
persons fashioned and reduced into a method of rules & precepts,
then no doubt may there be the like with vs. And if th'art of Poesie
be but a skill appertaining to vtterance, why may not the same
be with vs as wel as with them, our language being no lesse copious
pithie and significatiue then theirs, our conceipts the same, and our
wits no lesse apt to deuise and imitate then theirs were? If againe
Art be but a certaine order of rules prescribed by reason, and gathered
by experience, why should not Poesie be a vulgar Art with
vs as well as with the Greeks and Latines, our language admitting
no fewer rules and nice diuersities then theirs? but peraduenture
moe by a peculiar, which our speech hath in many things differing
from theirs: and yet in the generall points of that Art, allowed to
go in common with them: so as if one point perchance which is
their feete whereupon their measures stand, and in deede is all the
beautie of their Poesie, and which feete we haue not, nor as yet neuer
went about to frame (the nature of our language and wordes
not permitting it) we haue in stead thereof twentie other curious
points in that skill more then they euer had, by reason of our rime
and tunable concords or simphonie, which they neuer obserued.
Poesie therefore may be an Art in our vulgar, and that verie methodicall
and commendable.

_CHAP. III._

_How Poets were the first priests, the first prophets, the first
Legislators and politicians in the world._

The profession and vse of Poesie is most ancient from the beginning, and
not as manie erroniously suppose, after, but before any ciuil society was
among men. For if it was first that Poesie was th'originall cause and
occasion of their first assemblies; when before the people remained in the
woods and mountains, vagarant and dipersed like the wild beasts; lawlesse
and naked, or verie ill clad, and of all good and necessarie prouision for
harbour or sustenance vtterly vnfurnished: so as they litle diffred for
their maner of life, from the very brute beasts of the field. Whereupon it
is fayned that _Amphion_ and _Orpheus_, two Poets of the first ages, one
of them, to wit _Amphion_, builded vp cities, and reared walles with the
stones that came in heapes to the sound of his h