The Defence of Poesie.
courage. Onely Alexanders example may serue, who by Plutarche is accounted of such vertue, that fortune was not his guide, but his footestoole, whose Acts speake for him, though Plutarche did not: indeede the Phaenix of warlike Princes. This Alexander, left his Schoolemaister liuing Aristotle behinde him, but tooke dead Homer with him. Hee put the Philosopher Callisthenes to death, for his seeming Philosophicall, indeed mutinous stubbornnesse, but the chiefe thing hee was euer heard to wish for, was, that Homer had bene aliue. Hee well founde hee receiued more brauerie of minde by the paterne of Achilles, then by hearing the definition of fortitude. And therefore if Cato misliked Fuluius for carrying Ennius with him to the field, It may be answered, that if Cato misliked it, the Noble Fuluius liked it, or else he had not done it; for it was not the excellent Cato Vticencis, whose authoritie I would much more haue reuerenced: But it was the former, in truth a bitter punisher of faultes, but else a man that had neuer sacrificed to the Graces. Hee misliked and cried out against all Greeke learning, and yet being foure score yeares olde beganne to learne it, belike fearing that Pluto vnderstood not Latine. Indeed the Romane lawes allowed no person to bee carried to the warres, but hee that was in the souldiers Role. And therefore though Cato misliked his vnmustred person, he misliked not his worke. And if hee had, Scipio Nasica (iudged by common consent the best Romane) loued him: both the other Scipio brothers, who had by their vertues no lessesurnames
