Page:The Defence of Poesie - Sidney (1595).djvu/15

 hath bene the first light giuer to ignorance, and first nurse whose milke litle & litle enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges. And will you play the Hedge-hogge, that being receiued into the den, draue out his host? Or rather the Vipers, that with their birth kill their parents? Let learned Greece in any of his manifold Sciences, be able to shew me one booke before Musæus, Homer, & Hesiod, all three nothing else but Poets. Nay let any Historie bee brought, that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named, who hauing bene the first of that country that made pennes deliuerers of their knowledge to the posteritie, nay iustly challenge to bee called their Fathers in learning. For not onely in time they had this prioritie, (although in it selfe antiquitie be venerable) but went before them, as causes to draw with their charming sweetnesse the wild vntamed wits to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion, was said to mooue stones with his Poetry, to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listned to by beasts, indeed stonie and beastly people. So among the Romans, were Liuius, ', and ', so in the Italian language, the first that made it aspire to be a treasure-house of Science, were the Poets Dante, Bocace, and Petrach. So in our English, wer Gower, and Chawcer, after whom, encoraged & delighted with their excellent foregoing, others haue folowed to bewtify our mother toong, aswel in the same kind as other arts. This did so notably shew it self, the Philosophers of Greece durst not a lōg time apear to world, but vnder mask of poets.