The Arte of English Poesie

When I wrate of these deuices, I smiled with myselfe, thinking that the
readers would do so to, and many of them say, that such trifles as these
might well haue bene spared, considering the world is full inough of them,
and that it is pitie mens heades should be fedde with such vanities as are
to none edification nor instruction, either of morall vertue, or otherwise
behooffull for the common wealth, to whose seruice (say they) we are all
borne, and not to fill and replenish a whole world full of idle toyes. To
which sort of reprehendours, being either all holy and mortified to the
world, and therefore esteeming nothing that fauoureth not of Theologie, or
altogether graue and worldy, and therefore caring for nothing but matters
of pollicie, & discourses of estate, or all giuen to thrift and passing
for none art that is not gainefull and lucratiue, as the sciences of the
Law, Phisicke and marchaundise: to these I will giue none other aunswere
then referre them to the many trifling poemes of _Homer, Ouid, Virgill,
Catullus_ and other notable writers of former ages, which were not of any
grauitie or seriousnesse, and many of them full of impudicitie and
ribaudrie, as are not these of ours, nor for any good in the world should
haue bene: and yet those trifles are come from many former siecles vnto
our times, vncontrolled or condemned or supprest by any Pope or Patriarch
or other seuere censor of the ciuill maners of men, but haue bene in all
ages permitted as the conuenient solaces and recreations of mans wit. And
as I can not denie but these conceits of mine be trifles: no lesse in very
deede be all the most serious studies of man, if we shall measure grauitie
and lightnesse by the wise mans ballance who after he had considered of
all the profoundest artes and studies among men, in th'ende cryed out with
this Epyphoneme, _Vanitas vanitatum & omnia vanitas_. Whose authoritie if
it were not sufficient to make me beleeue so, I could be content with
_Democritus_ rather to condemne the vanities of our life by derision, then
as _Heraclitus_ with teares, saying with that merrie Greeke thus,

    Omnia sunt risus, sunt puluis, & omnia nil sunt.
    Res hominum cunctae, nam ratione carent.

Thus Englished,

    All is but a iest, all daft, all not worth two peason:
    For why in mans matters is neither rime nor reason.