"Literature on language: an anthology", Christopher Brumfit.

"The difference is that one tells of what has happened, the other of the kinds of things that might happen. For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history; for while poetry is concerned with universal truths, history treats of particular facts."

 
                                                                  Aristotle
                                                           Poetics (c. 330 B.C.)                                                          Translated T.S. Dorsch