ABSTRACT
There is no art delivered to mankind that hath not the works of Nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend as they become actors and players, as it were, of what Nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and, by that he seeth, setteth down what order Nature hath taken therein. So do the geometrician and arithmetician in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician in times1 tell you which by nature agree, which not. The natural philosopher2 thereon hath his name, and the moral philosopher standeth upon3
the natural virtues, vices, and passions of man; and ‘follow Nature’, saith he, ‘therein, and thou shalt not err.’ The lawyer saith what men have determined,4
the historian what men have done. The grammarian speaketh only of the rules of speech; and the rhetorician and logician, considering what in Nature will soonest prove and persuade, thereon give artificial rules, which still are compassed5 within the circle of a question according to the proposed matter. The physician weigheth the nature of a man’s body, and the nature of things helpful or hurtful unto it. And the metaphysic,6 though it be in the second7
and abstract notions, and therefore be counted supernatural, yet doth he indeed build upon the depth of Nature. Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect another Nature, in making things either better than Nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in Nature, as the heroes, demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras,8 Furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts,9 but freely ranging only within the zodiac10 of his own wit.
