what advantage we received from that excellent groundwork which he laid; and since it is an casy thing to add to what already is invented, we ought all of us, without envy to him, or partiality to ourselves, to yield him the precedence in it.

Having done him this justice, as my guide, I may do myself so much, as to give an account of what I have performed after him. I observed then, as I said, what was wanting to the perfection. of his SIEGE OF RHODES; which was design, and variety of characters. And in the midst of this consideration, by mere accident I opened the next book that lay by me, which was an Ariosto in Italian; and the very first two lines of that poem gave me light to all I could desire:

Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori,

Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto, &c.

For the very next reflection which I made, was this, that an heroick play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroick poem; and consequently, that love and valour ought to be the subject of it. Both these Sir William D'Avenant had begun to shadow; but it was so, as first discoverers draw their maps, with head-lands, and promontories, and some few outlines of somewhat taken at a distance, and which the designer saw not clearly. The common drama obliged him to a plot well-formed and pleasant, or as the Ancients called it, one entire and great action. But this he afforded not himself in a story, which he neither filled with persons, nor beautified with characters,

nor varied with accidents. The laws of an heroick poem did not dispense with those of the other, but raised them to a greater height; and indulged him a farther liberty of fancy, and of drawing all things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage, as that is beyond the common words and actions of human life; and therefore, in the scanting of his images, and design, he complied not enough with the greatness and majesty of an heroick poem.

I am sorry I cannot discover my opinion of this kind of writing, without dissenting much from his, whose memory I love and honour. But I will do it with the same respect to him, as if he were now alive, and overlooking my paper while I write. His judgment of an heroick poem was this:That it ought to be dressed in a more familiar and easy shape; more fitted to the common actions and passions of human life; and, in short, more like a glass of nature, shewing us ourselves in our ordinary habits, and figuring a more practicable virtue to us, than was done by the ancients or moderns." Thus, he takes the image of an heroick poem from the drama, or stage-poetry; and accordingly, intended to divide it into five books, representing the same number of acts, and every book into several cantos, imitating the scenes which compose our

acts.

But this, I think, is rather a play in narration, as I may call it, than an heroick poem. If at least you will not prefer the opinion of a single

man to the practice of the most excellent authors both of ancient and latter ages. I am no admirer of quotations; but you shall hear, if you please, one of the ancients delivering his judgment on this question; it is Petronius Arbiter, the most elegant, and one of the most judicious authors of the Latin tongue; who, after he had given many admirable rules for the structure and beauties of an epick poem, concludes all in these following words :«Non enim res gesta versibus comprehendendæ sunt, quod longe melius historici faciunt: sed, per ambages, deorumque ministeria, præcipitandus est liber spiritus, ut potius furentis animi vaticinatio appareat, quam religiosa orationis, sub testibus, fides." In which sentence, and his own Essay of a Poem which immediately he gives you, it is thought he taxes Lucan, who followed too much the truth of history; crowded sentences together; was too full of points; and too often offered at somewhat which had more of the sting of an epigram, than of the dignity and state of an heroick poem. Lucan used not much the help of his Heathen Deities: there was neither the ministry of the gods, nor the precipitation of the soul, nor the fury of a prophet, (of which my author speaks,) in his PHARSALIA: he treats you more like a philosopher, than a poet; and instructs you in verse, with what he had been taught by his uncle Seneca in prose. In one word, he walks soberly a-foot, when he might fly. Yet Lucan is not always this religious historian. The oracle of Appius, and the witchcraft of

Erictho will somewhat atone for him, who was, indeed, bound up by an ill-chosen and known argument, to follow truth with great exactness. For my part, I am of opinion, that neither Homer, Virgil, Statius, Ariosto, Tasso, nor our English Spencer, could have formed their poems half so beautiful, without those gods and spirits, and those enthusiastick parts of poetry which compose the most noble parts of all their writings. And I will ask any man who loves heroick poetry, (for I will not dispute their tastes who do not,) if the Ghost of Polydorus in Virgil, the enchanted Wood in Tasso, and the Bower of Bliss in Spencer, (which he borrows from that admirable Italian,) could have been omitted without taking from their works some of the greatest beauties in them? And if any man object the improbabilities of a spirit appearing, or of a palace raised by magick, I boldly answer him, that an heroick poet is not tied to a bare representation of what is true, or exceeding probable, but that he may let himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation of such things as depending not on sense, and therefore not to be comprehended by knowledge, may give him a freer scope for imagination. It is enough, that in all ages and religions the greatest part of mankind have believed the power of magick, and that there are spirits or spectres which have appeared. This, I say, is foundation enough for poetry and I dare farther affirm, that the whole doctrine of separated beings, whether those

spirits are incorporeal substances, (which Mr. Hobbes, with some reason, thinks to imply a contradiction,) or that they are a thinner and more aerial sort of bodies, (as some of the Fathers have conjectured,) may better be explicated by poets, than by philosophers or divines. For their speculations on this subject are wholly poctical; they have only their fancy for their guide; and that, being sharper in an excellent poet than it is likely it should be in a phlegmatick, heavy gown-man, will see farther in its own empire, and produce more satisfactory notions on those dark and doubtful problems.

Some men think they have raised a great argument against the use of spectres and magick in heroick poetry, by saying they are unnatural: but, whether they or I believe there are such things, is not material; it is enough that, for aught we know, they may be in nature; and whatever is or may be, is not properly unnatural. Neither am I much concerned at Mr. Cowley's verses before Gondibert; though his authority is almost sacred to me. It is true, he has resembled the old cpick poetry to a fantastick fairy-land ; but he has contradicted himself by his own example; for he has himself made use of angels, and visions, in his DAVIDEIS, as well as Tasso in his GODFREY.

What I have written on this subject will not be thought digression by the reader, if he please to remember what I said in the beginning of this