{30} “Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity.”—Cicero, “De Oratore.” {31} _In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher_, _Historian_, _and all others_ (_bating comparison with the Divine_). {32} _He is beyond the Philosopher_. {33} Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” lines 372–3. But Horace wrote “Non homines, non Di”—“Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets.” {34} _The moral common-places_. Common Place, “Locus communis,” was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., “Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobæus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled ‘Polyanthea,’ provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter.” Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, “a common-place,” came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but commonly without wit in it. {35} _Thus far Aristotle_. The whole passage in the “Poetics” runs: “It is not by writing in verse or prose that the Historian and Poet are distinguished. The work of Herodotus might be versified; but it would still be a species of History, no less with metre than without. They are distinguished by this, that the one relates what has been, the other what might be. On this account Poetry is more philosophical, and a more excellent thing than History, for Poetry is chiefly conversant about general truth; History about particular. In what manner, for example, any person of a certain character would speak or act, probably or necessarily, this is general; and this is the object of Poetry, even while it makes use of particular names. But what Alcibiades did, or what happened to him, this is particular truth.” {36} Justinus, who lived in the second century, made an epitome of the history of the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Macedonian, and Roman Empires, from Trogus Pompeius, who lived in the time of Augustus. {37} _Dares Phrygius_ was supposed to have been a priest of Vulcan, who was in Troy during the siege, and the Phrygian Iliad ascribed to him as early as the time of Ælian, A.D. 230, was supposed, therefore, to be older than Homer’s. {38} _Quintus Curtius_, a Roman historian of uncertain date, who wrote the history of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which two are lost and others defective. {39} Not knowledge but practice. {40} _The Poet Monarch of all Human Sciences_.