The Defence of Poesy

“But thus much at least with his no few words he drave into me, that self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.” 

In his introductory anecdote about the horseman Pugliano, Sidney tells the story of his acquaintance’s enthusiastic speech about horsemanship. This enthusiasm supposedly provided the inspiration for Sidney to write this work about his own passion, poetry. This anecdote sets a light-hearted tone for the treatise, mocking Pugliano’s eloquent “self-love” in praise of a relatively frivolous skill. Sidney’s own self-deprecating tone could invite the reader to indulge his own shortcomings as we would indulge Pugliano’s.

“So that truly neither philosopher nor historiographer could at the first have entered into the gates of popular judgements, if they had not taken a great passport of poetry.” 

Sidney devotes considerable attention to literary genres and compares philosophy and historiography (the writing of history) unfavorably to poetry. Here, as he introduces the differences between the three genres, he argues that many of the greatest philosophers and historiographers of antiquity in fact wrote poetry and used it to improve their works. This fact points toward the primacy of poetry as both a genre and an educational tool.

“Among the Romans a poet was called vates, which is [...] a diviner, foreseer, or prophet [...] so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow upon this heart-ravishing knowledge.”

Sidney pays specific attention throughout this work to ancient Greek and Roman thought about poetry. This reflects the author’s humanist background, with the movement’s devotion to classical education and the ancient languages. Here, Sidney uses vates, a Latin word for “poet” that also means “prophet,” to inspire a discussion of the divine inspiration of poets.