The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse - you might put the work of Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it really consists in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. By a universal statement I mean one as to what such or such a kind of man will probably or necessarily say or do - which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes proper names to the characters.
