The effectiveness of poetry, then, in accomplishing this moral end lies in its pleasantness. The poet, says Sidney, in that most famous passage which is too frequently quoted incompletely,
commeth to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And pretending no more, doth intende the winning of the mind from wickedness to vertue: even as the childe is often brought to take most wholsom things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant tast.[[383]]
According to Sidney, then, it is the very purpose of poetry to win men to virtue by pleasant instruction. The argument of poetry in accomplishing this end is primarily the example. Sidney compares very elaborately philosophy, history, and poetry in an endeavor to show that poetry is the most effective instrument for forwarding virtue. In the first place poetry is better adapted than philosophy to win men to virtue because it persuades both by precepts and by examples, while philosophy persuades by precepts alone. His sanction for this high opinion of the persuasive power of example is the rhetorical commonplace of the renaissance that the way is long by precept and short by example.[[384]] To enforce this point he tells the story of how Menenius Agrippa won over the people of Rome to support the Senate by telling them the story of the revolt of the members against the belly. Quintilian[[385]] and Wilson[[386]] had already told this story to prove the effectiveness of the example as a rhetorical argument, a device of the public speaker.
The main advantage which poetry possesses over history, Sidney goes on, is that while the historian must stick to his facts, which too frequently are unedifying, the poet can and does create a world better than nature, and presents to his reader ideal figures of human conduct such as Pylades, Cyrus, and Æneas.[[387]] This is Sidney's application of Aristotle's assertion that history is particular and poetic universal; history records things as they are and poetic as they are, worse than they are, or better. Lest his readers might fear that the arguments of the poet might lose some of their persuasive force from their being fictitious, Sidney hastens to add: "For that a fayned example hath as much force to teach as a true example (for as for to moove, it is cleere, sith the fayned may be tuned to the highest key of passion);"[[388]] and here he is drawing from Aristotle's Rhetoric.[[389]] Through admiration of the noble persons of poetry, the reader is won to a desire for emulation. "Who readeth Æneas carrying olde Anchises on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune to perfourme so excellent an acte?"[[390]]
Although Sidney believes the principal moral value of poetry to reside in its power to teach and move by the use of examples, he devotes at least half a page to the beneficent effect of parables and allegories. The parables which he uses, however, are all Christian, and the allegories are all the Fables of Æsop. From the allegorical interpretation of poetry current in the middle ages and to a scarcely less degree among his English contemporaries Sidney remains conspicuously aloof.
In answering the specific charges against poetry, that it is a waste of time, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato, Sidney asserts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as poetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to literal truth, it cannot lie,[[391]] that poetry does not abuse man's wit, but man's wit abuses poetry, for "shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?"[[393]] and that Plato objected not to poetry but to its abuse.
Sir John Harington[[392]] who published his Brief Apologie of Poetrie in 1591, four years before the publication of Sidney's Apologie, based much of his treatise on Sidney. Unfortunately, he did not digest fully the arguments of the manuscript in his hand, and instead of a first-hand knowledge of Minturno and Scaliger had only the commonplaces of Plutarch. In spite even of Plutarch, allegory, not moral example, is his main line of defence. His fundamental basis is the stock Horatian "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," or as Harington paraphrases, "for in verse is both goodness and sweetness, Rubarb and Sugarcandie, the pleasant and the profitable."[[394]] The objection that poets lie Harington meets as Sidney does, "But poets never affirming any for true, but presenting them to us as fables and imitations, cannot lye though they would."[[395]] At this point Harington parts company with his master and goes back to the middle ages.
The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings divers and sundry meanings, which they call the senses or mysteries thereof. First of all for the litteral sence (as it were the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and notable exploits of some persons worthie memorie: then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the Morall sence profitable for the active life of man, approving vertuous actions and condemning the contrarie. Many times also under the selfesame words they comprehend some true understanding of naturall Philosophie, or sometimes of politike government, and now and then of divinitie: and these same sences that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the Allegorie.[[396]]
Nothing could be more specifically mediaeval. He then proceeds to explain the historical, moral, and three allegorical senses of the story of Perseus and the Gorgon--the highest allegory being theological. Further, to defend the allegorical senses of poetry, which conceals a pith of profit under a pleasant rind, Harington explains fully how Demosthenes, Bishop Fisher, and the Prophet Nathan enforced their arguments by allegorical stories. To Harington, then, poetry is useful as an introduction to Philosophy. Paraphrasing Plutarch On the Reading of Poets, he says:
So young men do like best that Philosophy that is not Philosophie, or that is not delivered as Philosophie, and such are the pleasant writings of learned Poets, that are the popular Philosophers and the popular divines.[[397]]