poet alone transcends it, improves it, makes, nay, brings it (“let it not be deemed too saucy a comparison”) in some sort into competition with the Creator Himself whom he imitates. ----- Footnote 244: Savonarola, _v. sup._, p. 20. ----- The kinds of this imitation are then surveyed—“Divine,” “Philosophical,” and that of the third or right sort, who only imitate to invent and improve, which neither divine nor philosophic poets can do. These classes are subdivided according to their matter—heroic, tragic, comic, &c.—or according to the sorts of verses they liked best to write in, “for, indeed, the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of writing which is called verse—indeed but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry.” And again, “it is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet.” Xenophon and Heliodorus were both poets in prose. Now let us “weigh this latter part of poetry first by works and then by parts,” having regard always to the “Architectonice or mistress-knowledge,” the knowledge of a man’s self, ethically and politically. Philosophy, history, law, &c., are then “weighed” against poetry at some length: and the judgment of Aristotle that Poetry is _philosophoteron_ and _spoudaioteron_ than history, is affirmed chiefly on the odd ground of poetical justice,—the right always triumphing in poetry though not in fact. Instances of the moral and political uses of poetry follow. Then for the parts. Pastoral, comedy, tragedy, &c., are by turns surveyed and defended; and it is in the eulogy of lyric that the famous sentence about _Chevy Chase_[245] occurs. After this, and after a stately vindication of Poetry’s right to the laurel, he turns to the objections of the objectors. Although repeating the declaration that “rhyming and versing make not poetry,” he argues that if they _were_ inseparable,[246] verse is the most excellent kind of writing, far better than prose. As to the abuses of poetry, they are but abuses, and do not take away the use, as is proved by a great number of stock examples. ----- Footnote 245: “I must confess my own barbarousness: I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.” Footnote 246: “As indeed it seemeth Scaliger judgeth.” -----