[26] Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning, virtuous action.
[27] Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy.
[28] Its advantage herein over History.
[29] “All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authórising thy trespass with compare.”
Shakespeare, “Sonnet” 35.
[30] “Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity.”—Cicero, “De Oratore.”
[31] In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher, Historian, and all others (bating comparison with the Divine).
[32] He is beyond the Philosopher.
[33] Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” lines 372–3. But Horace wrote “Non homines, non Di”—“Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets.”
[34] The moral common-places. Common Place, “Locus communis,” was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., “Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobæus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled ‘Polyanthea,’ provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter.” Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, “a common-place,” came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but commonly without wit in it.