In his Apology for Poetry Sidney defends poetry against all the charges made by Gosson. Sidney does this in a very logical and scholarly way. He takes up his defence point by point.
[see 00015 to read the accusations made by Gosson against poetry]
a) Defending poetry against the first charge he says that man could not employ his time more usefully than in poetry. He says that "no learning is so good as that teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto as much as poetry, then is the conclusion manifest that ink and paper cannot be to more profitable purpose employed."
b) Sidney rebuts the [second] charge of lying levelled against it. He who doesn't seek to establish any fact, past or present, can never lie. The poet creates something by emotion or imagination against which no charge of lying can be brought. The question of truth or falsehood would arise only when a person insists on telling a fact. the poet does not do so. He only probes in to the human heart and pours out human feelings which can never be false. A true poet cannot be a liar.
c) The third charge that "it abuses men's wit, training it to wanton sinfulness and lustful love" may be partly justified, but for this a particular poet may be blamed but not poetry. It's not poetry that abuses man's wit, but man's wit that abuses poetry. ABUSE OF POETRY, according to Sidney, IS NOT THE PROBLEM OF THE POETRY BUT OF THE POET.
