Pagina 422 van 1391

Whereas reason is ever in repose and cannot easily be displayed,

especially to a mixed multitude who have no experience of her.

Thus the poet is like the painter in two ways: first he paints an

inferior degree of truth, and secondly, he is concerned with an

inferior part of the soul. He indulges the feelings, while he

enfeebles the reason; and we refuse to allow him to have

authority over the mind of man; for he has no measure of greater

and less, and is a maker of images and very far gone from truth.