Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/255

Rh Some of the old philosophers were poets, as, according to the forementioned author, Socrates and Plato were; which, however, is what I did not know before; hut that does not say that all poets are, or that any need be, philosophers, otherwise than as those are so called who are a little out at the elbows. In which sense the great Shakspeare might have been a philosopher; but was no scholar, yet was an excellent poet. Neither do I think a late most judicious critick so much mistaken, as others do, in advancing this opinion, that "Shakspeare had been a worse poet, had he been a better scholar:" and sir W. Davenant is another instance in the same kind. Nor must it be forgotten, that Plato was an avowed enemy to poets; which is, perhaps, the reason why poets have been always at enmity with his profession; and have rejected all learning and philosophy, for the sake of that one philosopher. As I take the matter, neither philosophy, nor any part of learning, is more necessary to poetry (which, if you will believe the same author, is "the sum of all learning") than to know the theory of light, and the several proportions and diversifications of it in particular colours, is to a good painter.

Whereas therefore, a certain author, called Petronius Arbiter, going upon the same mistake, has confidently declared, that one ingredient of a good poet, is "Mens ingenti literarum flumine inundata;;" [sic] I do on the contrary, declare, that this his assertion (to speak of it in the softest terms) is no better than an invidious and unhandsome reflection on all the gentlemen poets of these times; for with his good leave, much less than a flood, or inundation, Rh