But what of history, which should have a monopoly on compelling examples? Here
Sidney once again draws on Aristotle, who wrote in the
Poetics that poetry is more philosophical and, in Sidney’s translation, “ingenious” than history because it deals with the universal (
katholou) rather than the particular (
kathekaston). Of course, it is good to record what actually happened. But poetry isn’t limited by that:
the poet can write about what
should have happened: of a great hero, such as Cyrus, not as he was, but as he should have been. The “feigned” Cyrus or Aeneas is “more doctrinable” than the true Cyrus or Aeneas, more capable of instructing readers about virtue because he is more clearly an embodiment thereof. Sidney gives other examples before concluding that the historian is limited by “his bare WAS,” whereas the poet can create an example to suit precisely what he or she is trying to communicate.