10.  I do not mention this cudgeling part of the story with a design to engage the secular arm in matters of this nature; but certainly, if it ever exerts itself in affairs of opinion and speculation, it ought to do it on such shallow and despicable pretenders to knowledge, who endeavour to give man dark and uncomfortable prospects of his being, and destroy those principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of all public societies, as well as private persons.

11.  I think it is one of Pythagoras’s golden sayings, that a man should take care above all things to have a due respect for himself; and it is certain, that this licentious sort of authors, who are for depreciating mankind, endeavour to disappoint and undo what the most refined spirits have been labouring to advance since the beginning of the world.  The very design of dress, good-breeding, outward ornaments and ceremonies, were to lift up human nature, and set it of too advantage.  Architecture, painting, and statuary, were invented with the same design; as indeed every art and science that contributes to the embellishment of life, and to the wearing off and throwing into shades the mean and low parts of our nature.

12.  Poetry carries on this great end more than all the rest, as may be seen in the following passages taken out of Sir Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, which gives a true and better account of this art than all the volumes that were ever written upon it.

“Poetry, especially heroical, seems to be raised altogether from a noble foundation, which makes much for the dignity of man’s nature.  For seeing this sensible world is in dignity inferior to the soul of man, poesy seems to endow human nature with that which history denies; and to give satisfaction to the mind, with at least the shadow of things, where the substance cannot be had.”

13.  “For if the matter be thoroughly considered, a strong argument may be drawn from poesy, that a more stately greatness of things, a more perfect order, and a more beautiful variety, delights the soul of man than any way can be found in nature since the fall.  Wherefore, seeing the acts and events, which are the subjects of true history, are not of that amplitude as to content the mind of man, poesy is ready at hand to feign acts more heroical.”

14.  “Because true history reports the successes of business not proportionable to the merit of virtues and vices, poesy corrects it, and presents events and fortunes according to desert, and according to the law of Providence:  because true history, through the frequent satiety and similitude of things, works a distaste and misprision in the mind of man; poesy cheereth and refresheth the soul, chanting things rare and various, and full of vicissitudes.”