" The Greeks, he tells us, chose poetry for their
children's first lessons. Surely (he argues) they never did that for the
sake of sweetly influencing the soul, but rather for the correction of
morals! Strabo's mental attitude is absurd, of course, and preposterous:
for this same influencing of the soul--[Greek: _phychagoghia_] (a
beautiful word)--is, as we have seen, Poetry's main business: but the
mischief of the notion did not end with making the schooldays of
children unhappy: it took hold of the poets themselves, and by turning
them into prigs dried up the children's well of consolation. The Fathers
of the Church lent a hand too, and a vigorous one; and for centuries the
face of the Muse was sicklied o'er with a pale determination to combine
amusement with instruction. Even our noble Sidney allowed his modesty to
be overawed by the pedantic tradition, though as a man of the world he
tactfully gave it the slip. "For suppose it be granted," he says, "(that
which I suppose with great reason may be denied) that the Philosopher in
respect of his methodical proceeding doth teach more perfectly than the
Poet: yet do I thinke that no man is so much _Philosophus_ as to compare
the Philosopher, in _mooving_, with the Poet.
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