Andre Dacier

The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry Andre Dacier

Book Excerpt: ...their Poems with biting Satyrs, which they sung to one another at their drunken Meetings; Thus Poetry was entirely Corrupted, and the present scarce retains any Mark of Religion. The Poets which followed, and who were (properly speaking, ) the Philosophers and Divines of those Times, seeing the desire the People had for those Feasts, and Shows, and impossibility of retrieving the first Simplicity; took another way to remedy this Disorder, and making an advantage of the Peoples Inclinations, gave them Instructions, disguis'd under the Charmes of Pleasure, as Physicians gild and sweeten the bitter Pills they administer to their Patients. I shall not recount all the different Changes, which have happen'd in Poetry, and by what degrees it has arrived to the Perfection, we now find it; I have spoken of it already in my Commentaries on Horace's Art of Poetry, and shall say more in explaining, what Aristotle writes in this Treatise. Homer was the first that in..