Dialogue

 1 Repub|        well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer
 2 Repub|       in high places, which the poet told about Uranus, and which
 3 Repub|        to Homer or to any other poet who is guilty of the folly
 4 Repub|     destroy a house." ~And if a poet writes of the sufferings
 5 Repub|      author of their misery-the poet is not to be permitted to
 6 Repub|        he said. ~Then the lying poet has no place in our idea
 7 Repub|       the "Iliad," in which the poet says that Chryses prayed
 8 Repub|     chiefs of the people," ~the poet is speaking in his own person;
 9 Repub|       in the speeches which the poet recites from time to time
10 Repub|       Quite true. ~But when the poet speaks in the person of
11 Repub|       case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by
12 Repub|          Very true. ~Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never
13 Repub|         run as follows (I am no poet, and therefore I drop the
14 Repub|    opposite style, in which the poet is the only speaker-of this
15 Repub|         the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will
16 Repub|        to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation
17 Repub|        he said. ~And the tragic poet is an imitator, and, therefore,
18 Repub|   things too, for that the good poet cannot compose well unless
19 Repub|        knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether
20 Repub|        to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients
21 Repub|     truth they never reach? The poet is like a painter who, as
22 Repub|         so. ~In like manner the poet with his words and phrases
23 Repub|  Certainly. ~Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular
24 Repub|         maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution,
25 Repub|        at the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most. ~
26 Repub| yourself into playing the comic poet at home. ~Quite true, he