which is exactly suited to
novels and that no one--Roger Ascham perhaps excepted--had until then
used in England.

Perhaps it will be found, he writes at the beginning of his work, with
the elegant gracefulness of a man who knows how to do everything that he
does well, that I carry my apology to excess; but that is excusable:
listen to what Pietro Pugliano, my master of horsemanship, at the
Emperor's Court, said: "Hee sayde souldiours were the noblest estate of
mankinde, and horsemen, the noblest of souldiours. Hee sayde, they were
the maisters of warre, and ornaments of peace: speedy goers and strong
abiders, triumphers both in camp and courts." For a prince no
accomplishment is comparable to that of being a good horseman; "skill of
government was but a Pedanteria in comparison: then would hee adde
certaine prayses, by telling what a peerlesse beast a horse was. The
onely serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beutie,
faithfulnes, courage, and such more, that if I had not beene a peece of
a logician before I came to him, I think he would have perswaded mee to
have wished my selfe a horse. But thus much at least with his no fewe
words hee drave into me, that selfe-love is better then any guilding to
make that seeme gorgious, wherein our selves are parties. Wherein, if
Pugliano his strong affection and weake arguments will not satisfie you,
I wil give you a neerer example of my selfe, who (I knowe not by what
mischance) in these my not old yeres and idelest times, having slipt
into the title of a poet, am provoked to say somthing unto you in the
defence of that my unelected vocation."

Set at ease by Pugliano's example, who seems to have had the same
veneration for the horse as his countryman Vinci, Sidney enters on his
defence and does not restrain himself from extolling poetry beyond any
product of the human mind. Poetry is superior to history, to philosophy,
to all forms of literature. Poets have, by the charm of their works,
surpassed the beauties of nature and they have succeeded in making "the
too much loved earth more lovely." He gives to poetry, in effect, an
immense domain: everything that is poetic or even merely a work of the
imagination is poetry for him: "there have beene many most excellent
poets, that never versified, and now swarme many versifiers that neede
never aunswere to the name of poets." For him, the romance of "Theagines
and Cariclea" is a "poem"; Xenophon's "Cyrus" is "an abs