The Importance of the Third Stage-High Conception of Poetry
 This brief survey of the evolution of criticism during the Elizabethan age makes it clear 
that the most important stage in this evolution is the third one, when there was much 
thinking over the nature and function of poetry, and an English theory of poetry was 
formulated.Poets 
were regarded as spiritual legislators and reformers; the function of poetry was considered 
to be to delight as well as to instruct.It can attain perfection only by a divine instinct, or by a great excel- lence 
of nature or by vast observation and experience of the world.The conception of poetry, and the function of a poet, was high.