PraCTiCe TesT 2
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Section I
Questions 1-15. Choose your answers to questions 1-15
based on a careful reading of the following passage.
An Invective Against Enemies of Poetry
With the enemies of poetry I care not if I have a
bout, and those are they that term our best writers but
babbling ballad-makers, holding them fantastical fools,
that have wit but cannot tell how to use it. I myself
have been so censured among some dull-headed
divines, who deem it no more cunning to write an
exquisite poem than to preach pure Calvin or distill
the juice of a commentary in a quarter sermon. Prove
it when you will, you slow-spirited Saturnists, that
have nothing but the pilferies of your pen to polish
an exhortation withal; no eloquence but tautologies to
tie the ears of your auditory unto you; no invention
but “here it is to be noted, I stole this note out of Beza
or Marlorat”; no wit to move, no passion to urge, but
only an ordinary form of preaching, blown up by use
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goes more exquisite pains and purity of wit to the
writing of one such rare poem as “Rosamund” than to
a hundred of your dunstical sermons.
Should we (as you) borrow all out of others, and
gather nothing of ourselves our names should be
baffuld on every bookseller’s stall, and not a chandler’s
mustard pot but would wipe his mouth with our
waste paper. “New herrings, new!” we must cry, every
time we make ourselves public, or else we shall be
christened with a hundred new titles of idiotism. Nor is
poetry an art whereof there is no use in a man’s whole
life but to describe discontented thoughts and youthful
desires; for there is no study but it doth illustrate and
beautify.
To them that demand what fruits the poets of our
time bring forth, or wherein they are able to prove
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and foremost, they have cleansed our language from
barbarism and made the vulgar sort here in London
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England) to aspire to a richer purity of speech than is
communicated with the commonality of any nation
under heaven. The virtuous by their praises they
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encourage to be more virtuous; to vicious men they
are as infernal hags to haunt their ghosts with eternal
infamy after death. The soldier, in hope to have his
high deeds celebrated by their pens, despiseth a whole
army of perils, and acteth wonders exceeding all
the devil, by their quills are kept in awe.
have the shame of the world. What age will not praise
immortal Sir Philip Sidney, whom noble Salustius
(that thrice singular French poet) hath famoused;
together with Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, and
merry Sir Thomas More, for the chief pillars of our
English speech. Not so much but Chaucer’s host, Bailly
in Southwark, and his wife of Bath he keeps such a
stir with, in his Canterbury Tales, shall be talked of
whilst the Bath is used, or there be ever a bad house in
that write of nothing but of mayors and sheriffs and
the dear year and the great frost, that can endow
your names with never-dated glory; for they want
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we have; they cannot sweeten a discourse, or wrest
admiration from men reading, as we can, reporting the
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the quintessence of all sciences, the marrow of wit and
the very phrase of angels. How much better is it, then,
to have an elegant lawyer to plead one’s cause, than
a stuttering townsman that loseth himself in his tale
and doth nothing but make legs; so much it is better
for a nobleman or gentleman to have his honor’s story
related, and his deeds emblazoned, by a poet, than a
citizen.
—Thomas Nashe
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SECTION I
Time—1 hour
Directions: This section consists of selections from literary works and questions on their content, form, and style. After
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