_Extra iocum_, I like your Dreames passingly well; and the
rather, bicause they sauour of that singular extraordinarie veine and
inuention whiche I euer fancied moste, and in a manner admired onelye in
Lucian, Petrarche, Aretine, Pasquill, and all the most delicate and fine
conceited Grecians and Italians, (for the Romanes to speake of are but
verye ciphars in this kinde,) whose chiefest endeuour and drifte was to
haue nothing vulgare, but, in some respecte or other, and especially in
liuely hyperbolicall amplifications, rare, queint, and odde in euery
pointe, and, as a man woulde saye, a degree or two, at the leaste, aboue
the reache and compasse of a common scholars capacitie. In whiche
respecte notwithstanding, as well for the singularitie of the manner as
the diuinitie of the matter, I hearde once a diuine preferre Saint Iohns
Reuelation before al the veriest metaphysicall visions and iolliest
conceited dreames or extasies that euer were deuised by one or other,
howe admirable or super excellent soeuer they seemed otherwise to the
worlde. And truely I am so confirmed in this opinion, that when I
bethinke me of the verie notablest and moste wonderful propheticall or
poeticall vision that euer I read, or hearde, meseemeth the proportion
is so vnequall, that there hardly appeareth anye semblaunce of
comparison: no more in a manner (specially for poets) than doth betweene
the incomprehensible wisedome of God and the sensible wit of man.
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