It is taken in two senses in respect of words or matter. In
the first sense, it is but a character of style, and belongeth to
arts of speech, and is not pertinent for the present. In the
latter, it is--as hath been said--one of the principal portions of
learning, and is nothing else but feigned history, which may be
styled as well in prose as in verse.
(2) The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of
satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature
of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to
the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of
man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more
absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things.
Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that
magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and
events greater and more heroical. Because true history propoundeth
the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits
of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in
retribution, and more according to revealed Providence.
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