elves are full of
the same impotent passion from which they were uttered. To fortify
us therefore against expressions of this nature, let this principle
continually ring in our ears, that poetry is not at all solicitous to
keep to the strict measure of truth. And indeed, as to what that truth
in these matters is, even those men themselves who make it their only
study to learn and search it out confess that they can hardly discover
any certain footsteps to guide them in that inquiry. Let us therefore
have these verses of Empedocles, in this case, at hand:--

No sight of man's so clear, no ear so quick,
No mind so piercing, that's not here to seek;

as also those of Xenophanes:--

The truth about the gods and ghosts, no man
E'er was or shall be that determine can;

and lastly, that passage concerning Socrates, in Plato, where he by the
solemnity of an oath disclaims all knowledge of those things. For those
who perceive that the searching into such matters makes the heads of
philosophers themselves giddy cannot but be the less inclined to regard
what poets say concerning them.

And we shall fix our young men more if, when we enter him in the poets,
we first describe poetry to him and tell him that it is an imitating
art and is in many respects like unto painting; not only acquainting
him with that common saying, that poetry is vocal painting and painting
silent poetry, but showing him, moreover, that when we see a lizard or
an ape or the face of a Thersites in a picture, we are surprised with
pleasure and wonder at it, not because of any beauty in the things, but
for the likeness of the draught. For it is repugnant to the nature of
that which is itself foul to be at the same time fair; and therefore it
is the imitation--be the thing imitated beautiful or ugly--that, in case
it do express it to the life, is commanded; and on the contrary, if the
imitation make a foul thing to appear fair, it is dispraised because
it observes not decency and likeness. Now some painters there are that
paint uncomely actions; as Timotheus drew Medea killing her children;
Theon, Orestes murdering his mother; and Parrhasius, Ulysses
counterfeiting madness; yea, Chaerephanes expressed in picture the
unchaste converse of women with men. Now in such cases a young man is
to be familiarly acquainted with this notion, that, when men praise such
pictures, they praise not the actions represented but only the painter's
art which