What then shall we say of the ancients? Not one, but many things. First then, as hath been said already, that the ancient Pythian priestesses pronounced most of their oracles in prose. Secondly, that those ages produced complexions and tempers of body much more prone and inclined to poetry, with which immediately were associated those other ardent desires, affections, and preparations of the mind, which wanted only something of a beginning and a diversion of the fancy from more serious studies, not only to draw to their purpose (according to the saying of Philinus) astrologers and philosophers, but also in the heat of wine and pathetic affections, either of sudden compassion or surprising joy, to slide insensibly into voices melodiously tuned, and to fill banquets with charming odes or love songs, and whole volumes with amorous canzonets and mirthful inventions. Therefore, though Euripides tells us, Love makes men poets who before no music knew, he does not mean that love infuses music and poetry into men that were not already inclined to those accomplishments, but that it warms and awakens that disposition which lay unactive and drowsy before. Otherwise we might say that now there were no lovers in the world, but that Cupid himself was vanished and gone, because that now-a-days there is not one Who now, true archer-like, Lets his poetic raptures fly To praise his mistress’s lip or eye, as Pindar said. But this were absurd to affirm. For amorous impatiencies torment and agitate the minds of many men not addicted either to music or poetry, that know not how to handle a flute or touch a harp, and yet are no less talkative and inflamed with desire than the ancients. And I believe there is no person who would be so unkind to himself as to say that the Academy or the quires of Socrates and Plato were void of love, with whose discourses and conferences touching that passion we frequently meet, though they have not left any of their poems behind. And would it not be the same thing to say, there never was any woman that studied courtship but Sappho, nor ever any that were endued with the gift of prophecy but Sibylla and Aristonica and those that delivered their oracles and sacred raptures in verse? For wine, as saith Chaeremon, soaks and infuses itself into the manners and customs of them that drink it. Now poetic rapture, like the raptures of love, makes use of the ability of its subject, and moves every one that receives it, according to its proper qualification.