In the comparatively short passage that he devotes to the subject of poetry in The Advancement of Learning, Bacon, who has just been discussing at some length the state of historical knowledge and enquiry, defines poetry as ‘nothing else but feigned history’. He then proceeds in characteristic fashion to examine its utility, saying of it:

Whether there is or is not a touch of irony in these remarks—the Neoplatonist Henry Reynolds was emphatically of the opinion that Bacon's whole attitude to poetry was a slighting one—that last sentence describes not only the way in which the poets, to Bacon's mind, handled the material of history, but also the way in which most historians handled it at the time when he was writing. The dominant tradition in historical works was still what R. G. Collingwood has called 'the providential idea'; and, some nine years later, in 1614, this approach to the past received its most impressive formulation in English with the publication of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.