infamy, invested in all deformity, enthralled to ignorance and malice, of a hidden and concealed malignity, and that hold a concomitancy with all evil. _What is a Poet_? _Poeta_.—A poet is that which by the Greeks is called κατ εξοχην, ο ποιητής, a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony, according to Aristotle; from the word ποιειν, which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem. _What mean_, _you by a Poem_? _Poema_.—A poem is not alone any work or composition of the poet’s in many or few verses; but even one verse alone sometimes makes a perfect poem. As when Æneas hangs up and consecrates the arms of Abas with this inscription:— “Æneas hæc de Danais victoribus arma.” {136a} And calls it a poem or carmen. Such are those in Martial:— “Omnia, Castor, emis: sic fiet, ut omnia vendas.” {136b} And— “Pauper videri Cinna vult, et est pauper.” {136c} _Horatius_.—_Lucretius_.—So were Horace’s odes called Carmina, his lyric songs. And Lucretius designs a whole book in his sixth:— “Quod in primo quoque carmine claret.” {136d} _Epicum_.—_Dramaticum_.—_Lyricum_.—_Elegiacum_.—_Epigrammat_.—And anciently all the oracles were called Carmina; or whatever sentence was expressed, were it much or little, it was called an Epic, Dramatic, Lyric, Elegiac, or Epigrammatic poem. _But how differs a Poem from what we call Poesy_?