Such a point of view was, of course, liable to be taken by persons alike unlikely to assume the “know-nothing” attitude of the more ignorant Catholics, the Philistine-Puritan attitude of Protestantism, or the merely Platonic and non-Christian theory of some free-thinkers. It might well seem to thoughtful lovers of literature that its very existence was in danger when it was attacked from so many sides, and that it was necessary to intrench it as strongly as possible. Nor were the materials and the plan of the fortification far to seek. The suggestion has been rather oddly discovered in the Geographer Strabo;[24] but authorities much more germane to the matter were at hand. Boccaccio himself had, as we have seen, both taken note of the danger and indicated the means of defence: Maximus Tyrius and Plutarch, the one in a manner more, the other in a manner less, favourable to poetry, had in effect long before traced out the whole Camp of Refuge on lines suitable either to the bolder or to the more timid defender of Poesy. The latter could represent it as the philosophy of the young, as a sort of _Kindergarten_-keeper in the vestibule of the higher mysteries, as not necessarily bad at all, and possibly very good. The former could argue for its equality with philosophy itself, as pursuing the same ends by different means, and appealing, not in the least _in forma pauperis_, to its own part of human nature. ----- Footnote 24: Geog. i. 11, 5, where he describes poetry as a rudimentary philosophy, providing an introduction to life, and educating pleasantly. I do not remember who _first_, or who successively, pointed this out before Shaftesbury, _Advice to an Author_, Part I. sect. 3, note _sub fin._ But Castelvetro (_Op. Var._, p. 83), and Opitz (_v. inf._, p. 361), among others, refer to it. -----