Page:The Defence of Poesie - Sidney (1595).djvu/18

 a litle stand vpon their authorities, but euen so farre as to see what names they haue giuē vnto this now scorned skill. Among the Romanes a Poet was called Vates, which is as much as a diuiner, foreseer, or Prophet, as by his conioyned words Vaticinium, and Vaticinari, is manifest, so heauenly a title did that excellent people bestowe vppon this hart-rauishing knowledge, and so farre were they carried into the admiration thereof, that they though in the chanceable hitting vppon any of such verses, great foretokens of their following fortunes, were placed. Whereupon grew the word of Sortes Vergilianæ, when by suddaine opening Virgils booke, they lighted vppon some verse of his, as it is reported by many, whereof the Histories of the Emperours liues are full. As of Albinus the Gouernour of our Iland, who in his childhood met with this verse Arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis: and in his age performed it, although it were a verie vaine and godlesse superstition, as also it was, to thinke spirits were commaunded by such verses, whereupon this word Charmes deriued of Carmina, commeth: so yet serueth it to shew the great reuerence those wittes were held in, and altogither not without ground, since both by the Oracles of Delphos and Sybillas prophesies, were wholly deliuered in verses, for that same exquisite obseruing of number and measure in the words, and that high flying libertie of conceit propper to the Poet, did seeme to haue some diuine force in it. And may not I presume a little farther, to shewe the reasonablenesse of this word Vatis, and say that the