Let us, however, now as always, abstain from speculation when we have fact; and here we have at least three very notable facts—Gosson’s _School of Abuse_,[239] with its satellite tractates, Lodge’s untitled _Reply_,[240] and the famous _Defence of Poesy_ or _Apology for Poetry_[241] which Sidney (to whom Gosson had rashly dedicated his book) almost certainly intended as a counterblast, though either out of scorn, as Spenser hints, or (more probably from what we know of him) out of amiable and courteous dislike to requite a compliment with an insult, he takes no direct notice of Gosson at any time. ----- Footnote 239: Reprinted by Mr Arber, with its almost immediately subsequent _Apology_. I wish he had added the _Ephemerides of Phialo_ which accompanied the _Apology_, and the _Plays Confuted_ of three years later; for these books—very small and very difficult of access—add something to the controversy. Footnote 240: Several times reprinted; most recently by the present writer in _Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets_ (London, 1892). Footnote 241: Also frequently (indeed oftener) reprinted as by Arber, London, 1868; Shuckburgh, Cambridge, 1891; Cook, Boston (U.S.A.), 1890. ----- _The School of Abuse_ (which is written in such a style as almost to out-Euphuise the contemporary _Euphues_ itself) is critical wholly from the moral side, and with reference to the actual, not the necessary or possible, state of poetry. [Sidenote: The School of Abuse.] There are even, the author says, some good plays, including at least one of his own; but the whole of ancient poetry (he says little or nothing of modern) is infected by the blasphemy and immorality of Paganism, and nearly the whole of the modern stage is infected by the abuses of the theatre—of which Gosson speaks in terms pretty well identical with those which Puritan teachers had for some years past been using in sermon and treatise. But outside of the moral and religious line he does not step: he is solely occupied with the lies and the licence of poets and players.