If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being a good poet without first being a good man.
Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast, Still to be powder’d, all perfum’d. Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound.
There is no bounty to be showed to such As have real goodness: Bounty is A spice of virtue; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it?
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it.
