After a general defence of poetry furnished with precedents drawn from every quarter, even from the respect paid to their minstrels by the Irish, Sidney defines the final end of poetry as being "to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, can be capable of...." If poetry does not always attain this end, "it is not the fault of the art, but that by few men that art can be accomplished". He quotes Aristotle's "Poetics" to the effect that poetry is more philosophical and more serious than philosophy. Nothing in history is so noble but that "the poet may, if he list, make it his own, beautifying it both for further teaching, and more delighting, as it please him, having all, from Dante's heaven to his hell, under the authority of his pen". Here Sidney seems to differ from Scott, who regarded some examples of human fortunes, for example in the case of Mary Stuart, as beyond the range of the poetic art. But Sidney, foreseeing the objection, adds, "I speak of the art, not of the artificer". Sidney then discusses the various Kinds of poetry. As to the Comedy, "naughty play-makers and stage-keepers have made it justly odious,"--so far he sides with the Puritans of his time. In speaking of the lyric, he says: "I must confess mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas" ("Chevy Chase"), "that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet". Indeed the true spirit of poetry did dwell, disregarded by wits and courtiers, in the popular poetry and the ballads. But poetry, he knows not why, finds, in our time, a hard welcome in England: "I think the very earth laments it, and therefore decks our soil with fewer laurels than it was accustomed, for heretofore poets have in England also flourished". If poets are not esteemed it is because they do not deserve esteem, for we are "taking upon us to be poets in despite of Pallas," _invita Minerva._ Our would-be poets are destitute of genius--which was very true. "Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his 'Troilus and Cressida': of whom truly I know not whether to marvel more either that he, in that misty time, could see so clearly, or that we, in this clear age, go so stumblingly after him." What ailed Sidney's age was lack of terseness and clearness. Most poets did not know what they would be at; they were confused by the tumult of religion, the loss of old ideals, the language in transition, the tyranny of the misunderstood classics, the constant effort to imitate Greece, Rome, France, and Italy. They could not yet see life and literature steadily, and see them whole. Sidney found little that "had poetical sinews," except in Chaucer; parts of "The Mirror for Magistrates," the Earl of Surrey's lyrics, and Spenser's "'Shepherd's Calendar' hath much poetry in his 'Eclogues,' indeed worthy the reading, if. I be not deceived. That same framing of his style to an old rustic language I cannot allow..."