at did not cheat, and he that was cheated was wiser
than he that was not cheated.

It deserves therefore our consideration, whether we shall put young men
into Epicurus's boat,--wherein, having their ears stopped with wax, as
those of the men of Ithaca were, they shall be obliged to sail by and
not so much as touch at poetry,--or rather keep a guard on them, so
as to oblige their judgments by principles of right reason to use it
aright, and preserve them from being seduced to their hurt by that which
affords them so much delight. For neither did Lycurgus, the valiant
son of Dryas (as Homer calls him) ("Iliad," vi. 130.) act like a man of
sound reason in the course which he took to reform his people that were
much inclined to drunkenness, by travelling up and down to destroy all
the vines in the country; whereas he should have ordered that every vine
should have a well of water near it, that (as Plato saith) the drunken
deity might be reduced to temperance by a sober one. For water mixed
with wine takes away the hurtful spirits, while it leaves the useful
ones in it. Neither should we cut down or destroy the Muses' vine,
poetry; but where we perceive it luxuriates and grows wild through an
ungoverned appetite of applause, there ought we to prune away or keep
under the fabulous and theatrical branches thereof; and where we find
any of the Graces linked to any of the Muses,--that is, where the
lusciousness and tempting charms of language are not altogether barren
and unprofitable,--there let us make use of philosophy to incorporate
with it.

For as, where the mandrake grows near the vine and so communicates
something of its force thereto, the wine that is made of its grapes
makes the sleep of those that drink it more refreshing; so doth the
tempering poetry with the principles of philosophy and allaying their
roughness with its fictions render the study of them more easy and the
relish of them more grateful to young learners. Wherefore those that
would give their minds to philosophical studies are not obliged to avoid
poetry altogether, but rather to introduce themselves to philosophy by
poems, accustoming themselves to search for and embrace that which may
profit in that which pleaseth them, and rejecting and discarding that
wherein they find nothing of this nature. For this discrimination is the
first step to learning; and when this is attained, then, according to
what Sophocles saith,--

To have begun well what