“The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, {xv} because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical. Because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence. Because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations. So as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. And we see that by these insinuations and congruities with man’s nature and pleasure, joined also with the agreement and consort it hath with music, it hath had access and estimation in rude times and barbarous regions, where other learning stood excluded.” These definitions are too broad for poetry, and too narrow for imaginative literature in general, though that is what they aimed to define. It was as difficult for Sidney and Bacon as for Aristotle to propound a theory embracing literary forms that were not yet invented; and furthermore it is probable that had they witnessed the birth of naturalism in Defoe, or its ultimate developments in our own age, they would have denied to it the name of literature or art. But there is no place in such a definition for many works that neither Sidney nor Bacon would have hesitated to admit, the novels of George Eliot, for instance, or those of Fielding. Yet a modern explanation of poetry, that of Newman, would not exclude even such prose works as these. He says, “Moreover, by confining the attention to one series of events and scene of action, it bounds and finishes off the confused luxuriance of real nature; while, by a skilful adjustment of circumstances, it brings into sight the connexion of cause and effect, completes the dependance of the parts one on another, and harmonises the proportions of the whole.”