Because
true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less
interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness and
more unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth that
poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality and to
delectation. And therefore, it was ever thought to have some
participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the
mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind;
whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of
things. And we see that by these insinuations and congruities with
man's nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and
consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in
rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood
excluded.
(3) The division of poesy which is aptest in the propriety thereof
(besides those divisions which are common unto it with history, as
feigned chronicles, feigned lives, and the appendices of history, as
feigned epistles, feigned orations, and the rest) is into poesy
narrative, representative, and allusive.
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