Seest not how Jove,—because he cannot lie
Nor vaunt nor laugh at impious drollery,
And pleasure's charms are things to him unknown,—
Among the gods wears the imperial crown?
wherein differ they from what Plato says, that the divine nature is remote from both joy and grief? And that saying of Bacchylides,
Virtue alone doth lasting honor gain,
But men of basest souls oft wealth attain;
and those of Euripides much of the same import,
Hence temperance in my esteem excels,
Because it constantly with good men dwells;
However you may strive for honor
And you may seem to have secured by wealth virtue,
Good men will place you among the miserable;
do they not evidently confirm to us what the philosophers say of riches and other external good things, that without virtue they are fruitless and unprofitable enjoyments?
Now thus to accommodate and reconcile poetry to the doctrines of philosophy strips it of its fabulous and personated parts, and makes those things which it delivers usefully to acquire also the reputation of gravity; and over and above, it inclines the soul of a young man to receive the impressions of philosophical precepts. For he will hereby be enabled to come to them not altogether destitute of some sort of relish of them, not as to things that he has heard nothing of before, nor with an head confusedly full of the false notions which he hath sucked in from the daily tattle of his mother and nurse,—yea, sometimes too of his father and pedant,—who have been wont to speak of rich men as the happy men and mention them always with honor, and to express themselves concerning death and pain with horror, and to look on virtue without riches and glory as a thing of nought and not to be desired. Whence it comes to pass, that when such youths first do hear things of a quite contrary nature from philosophers, they are surprised with a kind of amazement, trouble, and stupid astonishment, which makes them afraid to entertain or endure them, except they be dealt with as those who come out of very great darkness into the light of the bright sun, that is, be first accustomed for a while to behold those doctrines in fabulous authors, as in a kind of false light, which hath but a moderate brightness and is easy to be looked on and borne without disturbance to the weak sight. For having before heard or read from poets such things as these are,—
Mourn one's birth, as the entrance of all ills;
But joy at death, as that which finishes misery;
Of worldly things a mortal needs but two;
A drink of water and the gift of Ceres:
O tyranny, to barbarous nations dear!
This in all human happiness is chief,
To know as little as we can of grief;
they are the less disturbed and offended when they hear from philosophers that no man ought to be overconcerned about death; that riches are limited to the necessities of nature; that the happiness of man's life doth not consist in the abundance of wealth or vastness of employments or height of authority and power, but in freedom from sorrow, in moderation of passions, and in such a temper of mind as measures all things by the use of Nature.
Wherefore, upon all these accounts, as well as for all the reasons before mentioned, youth stands in need of good government to manage it in the reading of poetry, that being free from all prejudicate opinions, and rather instructed beforehand in conformity thereunto, it may with more calmness, friendliness, and familiarity pass from thence to the study of philosophy.