he cause why
each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont
to be very observant of all his master's commands, yet withal used to
ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be
obeyed as pedagogues and promulgators of laws are, except they have
reason to back what they say. And that they will not want, when they
speak well; and if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and
frivolous. But nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason
of such trivial speeches as these, and inquire in what sense they are
spoken:--

It bodes ill, when vessels you set up,
To put the ladle on the mixing-cup.

Who from his chariot to another's leaps,
Seldom his seat without a combat keeps.
(Hesiod "Works and Days," 744; "Iliad," iv. 306.)

But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination,
as to those that follow:--

The boldest men are daunted oftentimes,
When they're reproached with their parents' crimes:
(Euripides, "Hippolytus," 424.)

When any man is crushed by adverse fate,
His spirit should be low as his estate.

And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men's lives by
begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except they
have learned to return answer to each of them thus: "Wherefore is
it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should have a
dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle against Fortune,
and raise himself above the pressures of his low circumstances? Why, if
I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and foolish father, does it
not rather become me to bear myself confidently upon the account of my
own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited because of my father's
defects?" For he that can encounter such speeches and oppose them after
this manner, not yielding himself up to be overset with the blast of
every saying, but approving that speech of Heraclitus, that

Whate'er is said, though void of sense and wit,
The size of a fool's intellect doth fit,

will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.

These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the hurt we
might get by the study of poems.

Now, as on a vine the fruit oftentimes lies concealed and hidden under
its large leaves and luxuriant branches, so in the poet's phrases and
fictions that encompass them there are also many profitable and useful