An apology for poetry, or, The defence of poesy Book

But what, shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?

Who is it that ever was a scholar that doth not carry away some verses of Virgil, Horace, or Cato, which in his youth he learned, and even to his old age serve him for hourly lessons?
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In this short, and very dense, Apologia , Sidney sets out to refute Plato's position that Poets and Poesy have no place in an ideal Republic. Drawing from his wide reading and scholarly wit, the dense, humorous, and witty result, is nothing short of spectacular.

Along with Aristotle's Poetics , an essential exploration of literary theory.

I read this from the Oxford World Classics Collection, Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, which contains excellent notes by Katherine Duncan-Jones.

For those of you who incline with Plato's view, Sidney has a little something to say to you . . .
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I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the Nine Muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the reverend title of "a rhymer;" but to believe, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasurers of the Grecian's divinity; to believe, with Bembus, that they were the first bringers in of all civility; to believe, with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man, than the reading of Virgil; to believe, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased the heavenly deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy natural and moral, and "quid non?" to believe, with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused; to believe, with Landin, that they are so beloved of the gods that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury. Lastly, to believe themselves, when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses. Thus doing, your names shall flourish in the printers' shops: thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface: thus doing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all: you shall dwell upon superlatives: thus doing, though you be "Libertino patre natus," you shall suddenly grow "Herculea proles,"
"Si quid mea Carmina possunt;"
thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Virgil's Anchisis. But if (fie of such a but!) you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather, by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a Mome, as to be a Momus of poetry; then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses, as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must send you in the behalf of all poets; that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour, for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.