tion of Aeschylus, "for making men better." The same thought reappears in the words of the orator Hyperides—"How can we live beautifully unless we know the beautiful things in life?" For is not poetry among the most beautiful things in life? Plato, as is well known, would exclude the poet from his ideal state. But even this exclusion is evidence of the position and power of Greek poetry among the Greek people, and it is accompanied by interesting modifications. It is mainly, says Plato, because men believe in the literal truth of immoral myths and legends that they are injured by poetry. To a noble and true poetry he raises no objection. The poet and the law-giver are rivals, the latter striving to set in action the noblest of dramas, and the poet must not address the citizens in a manner out of harmony with the institutions of the state. There must be a censorship of poetry, and the poet must sing only of high thoughts and deeds. But even in Aristotle we note the beginning of a change of opinion as to the chief object of poetry,—a slight but a significant change. For him the chief use of poetry is that it affords a "noble pleasure;" and this double view is reflected in the sentiment of Sir Philip Sidney that the end of poetry is "delightful teaching," poetry being the "sweet food of uttered knowledge." A century after Aristotle, a great scholar,—perhaps the first great scholar in the modern sense of this word, Eratosthenes of Cyrene,—declares with emphasis that the end of poetry is not instruction or edification, but pleasure, or beguiling delight. And this view leads on to the further degradation of the conception of the office of poetry, until men say that the chief reason for studying poetry is to have something to quote!
