Joanna wrote:
>
> Re: Sidney/
> I'd have to go to the library to look it up. But it's a famous passage
> where he defends the poets from the charge of lying.
>
So as the other Artistes, and especially the Historian, affirming manie things, can in the clowdie knowledge of mankinde, hardly escape from manie lies. But the Poet as I said before, never affirmeth, the Poet never maketh any Circles about your imagination{103}, to conjure you to beleeve for true, what he writeth: he citeth not authorities of other histories, even for his entrie, calleth the sweete Muses to inspire unto him a good invention. In troth, not laboring to tel you what is, or is not, but what should, or should not be. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/defence.html
Sidney was concerned with history and religion, though, and not science (i.e. natural philosophy)
Carrol