There are as many defenses of poetry in the Renaissance as there are literary critics but the one name that comes most frequently to mind is that of Sidney. The reason is clear. Most critics embodied what they had to say in defense of poetry in formal, critical treatises. Sidney, with a better sense of drama, wrote his as a separate manifesto. It is known that Julius Caesar Scaliger devoted considerable energy in his Poetices Libri Septem to replying to the charges against poetry. What is less well known is that he, too, tried his hand at a separate defense of poetry which he called Contra Poetices Calumniatores Declamatio. This interesting composition is buried in the seldom read edition of his letters and orations first published in 1600, forty-two years after his death. This work deserves to be known because it puts into brief form, and in emotional language, several of the leading ideas of Poetices Libri Septem. Since it breathes defiance of the unpolished slanderers of literature who surrounded him in Agen and hints at the difficulties which he faced there, it is, also, of considerable biographical interest.