{ 19} Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain.
{ 21} § 3. _Subdivisions of Poetry proper_.
{ 22} _Its essence is in the thought_, _not in apparelling of verse_.
{ 23} _Heliodorus_ was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the fourth century. His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the “Æthiopica,” was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth’s reign, translated into English.
{ 24} _The Poet’s Work and Parts_. § 1. WORK: _What Poetry does for us_.
“Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”
(Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice,” act v., sc. 1)
{ 26} _Poetry best advances the end of all earthly learning_, _virtuous action_.
{ 27} _Its advantage herein over Moral Philosophy_.
{ 28} _Its advantage herein over History_.
{ 29} “All men make faults, and even I in this, Authórising thy trespass with compare.”
{ 30} “Witness of the times, light of truth, life of memory, mistress of life, messenger of antiquity.”—Cicero, “De Oratore.”
{ 31} _In what manner the Poet goes beyond Philosopher_, _Historian_, _and all others_ (_bating comparison with the Divine_).
{ 33} Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” lines 372–3. But Horace wrote “Non homines, non Di”—“Neither men, gods, nor lettered columns have admitted mediocrity in poets.”
{ 34} _The moral common-places_. Common Place, “Locus communis,” was a term used in old rhetoric to represent testimonies or pithy sentences of good authors which might be used for strengthening or adorning a discourse; but said Keckermann, whose Rhetoric was a text-book in the days of James I. and Charles I., “Because it is impossible thus to read through all authors, there are books that give students of eloquence what they need in the succinct form of books of Common Places, like that collected by Stobæus out of Cicero, Seneca, Terence, Aristotle; but especially the book entitled ‘Polyanthea,’ provides short and effective sentences apt to any matter.” Frequent resort to the Polyanthea caused many a good quotation to be hackneyed; the term of rhetoric, “a common-place,” came then to mean a good saying made familiar by incessant quoting, and then in common speech, any trite saying good or bad, but commonly without wit in it.