Page:The Defence of Poesie - Sidney (1595).djvu/27

 haue it before any other competitors: among whō principally to challenge it, step forth the moral Philosophers, whom me thinkes I see comming towards me, with a sullain grauitie, as though they could not abide vice by day-light, rudely cloathed, for to witnesse outwardly their contempt of outward things, with bookes in their hands against glorie, whereto they set their names: sophistically speaking against subtiltie, and angry with any man in whom they see the foule fault of anger. These men casting larges as they go of definitions, diuitions, and distinctions, with a scornful interrogatiue, do soberly aske, whether it be possible to find any path so ready to lead a man to vertue, as that which teacheth what vertue is, & teacheth it not only by deliuering forth his very being, his causes and effects, but also by making knowne his enemie vice, which must be destroyed, and his combersome seruant passion, which must be mastred: by shewing the generalities that contains it, and the specialities that are deriued from it. Lastly by plaine setting downe, how it extends it selfe out of the limits of a mans owne little world, to the gouernment of families, and mainteining of publike societies. The Historian scarsely giues leisure to the Moralist to say so much, but that he loaden with old Mouse-eaten Records, authorising himselfe for the most part vpon other Histories, whose greatest authorities are built vppon the notable foundation Heresay, hauing much ado to accord differing writers, & to pick truth out of partiality: better acquainted with a 1000. yeres ago, thē with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world goes, then