What then shall we say of the ancients? Not one,
but many things. First then, as hath been said already,
that the ancient Pythian priestesses pronounced most of
their oracles in prose. Secondly, that those ages produced
complexions and tempers of body much more prone
and inclined to poetry, with which immediately were associated those other ardent desires, affections, and preparations
of the mind, which wanted only something of a beginning
and a diversion of the fancy from more serious studies, not
only to draw to their purpose (according to the saying of
Philinus) astrologers and philosophers, but also in the heat
of wine and pathetic affections, either of sudden compassion
or surprising joy, to slide insensibly into voices melodiously
tuned, and to fill banquets with charming odes or love songs,
and whole volumes with amorous canzonets and mirthful
inventions. Therefore, though Euripides tells us,
Love makes men poets who before no music knew,
[p. 95]
he does not mean that love infuses music and poetry into
men that were not already inclined to those accomplishments, but that it warms and awakens that disposition
which lay unactive and drowsy before. Otherwise we
might say that now there were no lovers in the world,
but that Cupid himself was vanished and gone, because
that now-a-days there is not one
Who now, true archer-like,
Lets his poetic raptures fly
To praise his mistress's lip or eye,
as Pindar said. But this were absurd to affirm. For
amorous impatiencies torment and agitate the minds of
many men not addicted either to music or poetry, that
know not how to handle a flute or touch a harp, and yet
are no less talkative and inflamed with desire than the
ancients. And I believe there is no person who would be
so unkind to himself as to say that the Academy or the
quires of Socrates and Plato were void of love, with
whose discourses and conferences touching that passion
we frequently meet, though they have not left any of their
poems behind. And would it not be the same thing to
say, there never was any woman that studied courtship
but Sappho, nor ever any that were endued with the gift
of prophecy but Sibylla and Aristonica and those that
delivered their oracles and sacred raptures in verse? For
wine, as saith Chaeremon, soaks and infuses itself into the
manners and customs of them that drink it. Now poetic
rapture, like the raptures of love, makes use of the ability
of its subject, and moves every one that receives it, according to its proper qualification.
