{3} A fable from the “Hetamythium” of Laurentius Abstemius, Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and Librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo under the Pontificate of Alexander VI. (1492–1503). {4} Pliny says (“Nat. Hist.,” lib. xi., cap. 62) that the young vipers, impatient to be born, break through the side of their mother, and so kill her. {5} § 2. _Borrowed from by Philosophers_. {6} Timæus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian Critias are represented by Plato as having listened to the discourse of Socrates on a Republic. Socrates calls on them to show such a state in action. Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the ancient citizens of Attica, 10,000 years before, from an inroad of countless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis, in the Western Ocean; a struggle of which record was preserved in the temple of Naith or Athené at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down, through Solon, by family tradition to Critias. But first Timæus agrees to expound the structure of the universe; then Critias, in a piece left unfinished by Plato, proceeds to show an ideal society in action against pressure of a danger that seems irresistible. {7} Plato’s “Republic,” book ii. {8} § 3. _Borrowed from by Historians_. {9} § 4. _Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic_. {10} § 5. _And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David_. {11} § 6. _By the Greeks_, _Poets were honoured with the name of Makers_. {12} _Poetry is the one creative art_. _Astronomers and others repeat what they find_. {13} _Poets improve Nature_. {14} _And idealize man_. {15} _Here a Second Part of the Essay begins_. {16} § 1. Poetry defined. {17} § 2. _Its kinds_. _a._ _Divine_. {18} _b._ _Philosophical_, _which is perhaps too imitative_. {19} Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain. {20} _c._ _Poetry proper_. {21} § 3. _Subdivisions of Poetry proper_. {22} _Its essence is in the thought_, _not in apparelling of verse_. {23} _Heliodorus_ was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the fourth century. His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the “Æthiopica,” was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth’s reign, translated into English. {24} _The Poet’s Work and Parts_. § 1. WORK: _What Poetry does for us_. {25} _Their clay lodgings_— “Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.” (Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice,” act v., sc. 1) {26} _Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning_, _virtuous action_. {27} _Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy_. {28} _Its advantage herein over History_. {29} “All men make faults, and even I in this, Authórising thy trespass with compare.” Shakespeare, “Sonnet” 35.