Page:The Defence of Poesie - Sidney (1595).djvu/31

 king picture of ''Poesie. Tully taketh much paines, and many times not without Poeticall helpes to make vs know the force, loue of our country hath in vs. Let vs but heare old Anchices, speaking in the middest of Troies flames, or see Vlisses in the fulnesse of all Calipsoes delightes, bewaile his absence from barraine and beggerly Ithecæ''. Anger the Stoickes said, was a short madnesse: let but Sophocles bring you Aiax on a stage, killing or whipping sheepe and oxen, thinking them the Army of Greekes, with their Chieftaines Agamemnon, and Menelaus: and tell me if you haue not a more familiar insight into Anger, then finding in the schoolemen his Genus and Difference. See whether wisdom and temperance in Vlisses and Diomedes, valure in Achilles, friendship in Nisus and Eurialus, euen to an ignorant man carry not an apparant shining: and contrarily, the remorse of conscience in Oedipus; the soone repenting pride in Agamemnon; the selfe deuouring crueltie in his father Atreus; the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers; the sower sweetnesse of reuenge in Medea; and to fall lower, the Terentian Gnato, and our Chawcers Pander so exprest, that we now vse their names, to signifie their Trades: And finally, all vertues, vices, and passions, so in their owne naturall states, laide to the view, that we seeme not to heare of them, but clearly to see through them. But euen in the most excellent determination of goodnesse, what Philosophers counsaile can so readely direct a Prince, as the feined Cirus in Xenophon, or a vertuous man in all fortunes: as Aeneas in Virgill, or a whole Common-wealth, as the Way