almost as universally valuable: for, setting prejudice and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the stamp of Louis, the patron of all arts, is not much inferior to the medal of an Augustus Cæsar. Let this be said without entering into the interest of factions and parties, and relating only to the bounty of that king to men of learning and merit: a praise so just, that even we, who are his enemies, cannot refuse it to him. Now, if it be permitted me to go back again to the consideration of epic poetry, I have confessed, that no man hitherto has reached, or so much as approached to, the excellencies of Homer, or of Virgil; I must further add, that Statius, the best versificator next Virgil, knew not how to design after him, though he had the model in his eye; that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is, besides, too full of heat and affectation; that, among the moderns, Ariosto neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness, of his draught: his style is luxurious, without majesty or decency; and his adventures, without the compass of nature and possibility: Tasso, whose design was regular, and who observed the rules of unity in time and place more closely than Virgil, yet was not so happy in his action; he confesses himself to have been too lyrical; that is, to have written beneath the dignity of heroic verse, in his Episodes of Sophronia, Erminia, and Armida; his story is not so pleasing as Ariosto's; he is too flatulent sometimes, and sometimes too dry; many times unequal, and almost always forced; and, besides, is full of conception, points of epigram and witticism; all which are not only below the dignity of heroic verse, but contrary to its nature: Virgil and Homer have not one of them. And those who are guilty of so boyish an ambition in so grave a subject, are so far from being considered as heroic poets, that they ought to be turned down from Homer to the Anthologia, from Virgil to Martial and Owen's epigrams, and from Spenser to Flecnoe; that is, from the top to the bottom of all poetry. But to return to Tasso: he borrows from the invention of Boyardo; and in his alteration of his poem, which is infinitely the worse, imitates Homer so very servilely, that (for example) he gives the king of Jerusalem fifty sons, only, because Homer had bestowed the like number on king Priam; he kills the youngest in the same manner, and has provided his hero with a Patroclus, under another name, only to bring him back to the wars, when his friend was killed. The French have performed nothing in this kind, which | is not as below those two Italians, and subject tō a thousand more reflections, without examining their St. Lewis, their Pucelle, or their Alarique: the English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning, to have been perfect poets; and yet, both of them are liable to many censures. For there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser: he aims at the accomplishment of no one action: he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures; and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without subordination or performance. Every one is most valiant in his own legend; only we must do them that justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem; and succours the rest, when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of queen Elizabeth; and he attributed to each of them, that virtue which he thought most conspicuous in them: an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem, in the six remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not have been perfect, because the model was not true. But prince Arthur, or his chief patron, sir Philip Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit, to ac complish his design: for the rest, his obsolete lan. guage, and the ill choice of his stanza, are faults but of the second magnitude: for, notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice; and for the last, he is the more to be admired, that, labouring under such a diffi. culty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has surpassed him, among the Romans; and only Mr. Waller among the English. As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his subject is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness: his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works: his heavenly ma chines are many, and human persons are but two. But I will not take Mr. Rymer's work out of his hands: he has promised the world a critique on that author; wherein, though he will not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will grant us, that his thoughts are elevated, his words sounding, and that no mau has so happily copied the manner of Homer, or so copiously translated his Græcisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true, he t of those embellishments which are afforded in the belief of those ancient heathens. And it is true, that in the severe notions of our faith, the fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, and suffering, for the love of God, whatever hardships can befal in the world; not in any great attempts, or in performance of those enterprises which the poets call heroic; which are commonly the effects of interest, ostentation, pride, and runs into a flat thought, sometimes for a hundred lines together, but it is when he is got into a track of scripture: his antiquated words were his choice, not his necessity; for therein he imitated Spenser, as Spenser imitated Chaucer. And though, perhaps, the love of their masters may have transported both too far, in the frequent use of them; yet, in my opinion, obsolete words may then be laudably revived, when either they are more sounding, or more significant, than those in prac-worldly honours. That humility and resignation tice; and, when their obscurity is taken away, are our prime virtues; and that these include no by joining other words to them, which clear the action, but that of the soul: whereas, on the consense; according to the rule of Horace, for the trary, an heroic poem requires to its necessary admission of new words. But in both cases a design, and as its last perfection, some great action moderation is to be observed in the use of them. of war, the accomplishment of some extraordinary For unnecessary coinage, as well as unnecessary undertaking, which requires the strength and vi`revival, runs into affectation; a fault to be avoid-gour of the body, the duty of a soldier, the caed on either hand. Neither will I justify Milton pacity and prudence of a general; and, in short, for his blank verse, though I may excuse him, as much, or more, of the active virtue, than the by the example of Hannibal Caro, and other suffering. But to this, the answer is very obvious. Italians, who have used it: for whatever causes God has placed us in our several stations; the he alledges for the abolishing of rhyme, (which I virtues of a private Christian are patience, obehave not now the leisure to examine) his own dience, submission, and the like; but those of a particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was magistrate, or general, or a king, are prudence, not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, counsel, active fortitude, coercive power, awful nor the graces of it; which is manifest in his Ju-commands, and the exercise of magnanimity, as venilia, or verses written in his youth; where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet. By this time, my lord, I doubt not but that you wonder, why I have run off from my bias so long together, and made so tedious a digression from satire to heroic poetry. But, if you will not excuse it, by the tattling quality of age, which, as sir William Davenant says, is always narrative; yet I hope the usefulness of what I have to say on this subject, will qualify the remoteness of it; and this is the last time I will commit the crime of prefaces, or trouble the world with my notions of any thing that relates to verse. I have then, as you see, observed the failings of many great wits amongst the moderns, who have attempted to write an epic poem: besides these, or the like animadversions of them or other men, there is yet a farther reason given, why they cannot possibly succeed so well as the ancients, even though we could allow them not to be inferior, either in genius or learning, or the tongue in which they write, or all those other wonderful qualifications which are necessary to the forming of a true accomplished heroic poet. The fault is laid on our religion: they say, that Christianity is not capable well justice. So that this objection hinders not, but that an epic poem, or the heroic action of some great commander, enterprised for the common good and honour of the Cbristian cause, and executed happily, may be as well written now, a9 it was of old by the heathens; provided the poet be endued with the same talents; and the language, though not of equal dignity, yet, as near approaching to it as our modern barbarism will allow, which is all that can be expected from our own or any other now extant, though more refined; and therefore we are to rest contented with that only inferiority, which is not possibly to be remedied. I wish I could as easily remove that other difficulty which yet remains. It is objected by a great French critic, as well as an admirable poet, yet living, and whom I have mentioned with that honour which his merit exacts from me, I mean Boileau, that the machines of our Christian religion, in heroic poetry, are much more feeble to support the weight than those of heathenism, Their doctrine, grounded as it was on ridiculous fables, was yet the belief of the two victorious monarchies, the Grecian and Roman. Their gods did not only interest themselves in the event of wars (which is the effect of a superior Providence); but also espoused the several parties, in a visible corporeal descent, managed their intrigues, and fought their battles sometimes in opposition to each other: though Virgil (more discreet than Homer in that last particular) has contented himself with the partiality of his deities, their favours, their counsels, or commands, to those whose cause they had espoused, without bringing them to the outrageousness of blows. Now our religion, says he, is deprived of the greatest part of those machines; at least the most shining in epic poetry. Though St. Michael, in Ariosto, seeks out Discord, to send her among the pagans, and finds her in a convent of friars, where Peace should reign, which indeed is fine satire; and Satan, in Tasso, excites Solyman to an attempt by night on the Christian camp, and brings an host of devils to his assistance; yet the archangel, in the former example, when Discord was restive, and would not be drawn from her beloved monastery "with fair words, has the whip hand of her, drags her out with many stripes, sets her, on God's name, about her business; and makes her know the difference of strength betwixt a nuncio of Heaven, and a minister of Hell: the same angel, in the latter instance from Tasso (as if God had never another messenger belonging to the court, but was confined, like Jupiter to Mercury, and Juno to Iris) when he sees his time, that is, when half of the Christians are already killed, and all the rest are in a fair way of being routed, stickles betwixt the remainders of God's host, and the race of fiends; pulls the devils backwards by the tails, and drives them from their quarry; or otherwise the whole business had miscarried, and Jerusalem remained untaken. This, says Boileau, is a very unequal match for the poor devils, who are sure to come by the worst of it in the combat; for nothing is more easy, than for an Almighty Power to bring his old rebels to reason, when he pleases Consequently, what pleasure, what entertainment, can be raised from so pitiful a machine, where we see the success of the battle, from the very beginning of it; unless that, as we Christians, we are glad that we have gotten God on our side, to maul our enemies, when we cannot do the work ourselves? For if the port had given the faithful more courage, which had cost him nothing, or at least had made them exceed the Turks in number, then he might have gained the victory for us Christians, without interesting Heaven in the quarrel; and that with as much ease, and as little credit to the conqueror, as when a party of one hundred soldiers defeats another, which consists only of fifty. are This, my lord, I confess, is such an argument against our modern poetry, as cannot be answered by those mediums which have been used. We cannot hitherto boast, that our religion has furuished us with any such machines, as have made the strength and beauty of the ancient buildings. But what if I venture to advance an invention of my own, to supply the manifest defects of our new writers? I am sufficiently sensible of my weakness; and it is not very probable that I should succeed in such a project, whereof I have not had the least hint from any of my predecessors, the poets, or any of their seconds, and coadjutors, the critics. Yet we see the art of war is improved in sicges, and new instruments of death are invented daily: something new in philosophy and the mechanics is discovered almost every year: and the science of former ages is improved by the succeeding. I will not detain you with a long preamble to that, which better judges will, perhaps, conclude to be little worth. It is this, in short, that Christian poets have not hitherto been acquainted with their own strength. If they had searched the Old Testament as they ought, they might there have found the machines which are proper for their work; and those more certain in their effects, than it may be the New Testament is, in the rules sufficient for sal vation. The perusing of one chapter in the Prophecy of Daniel, and accommodating what there they find, with the principles of Platonic philosophy, as it is now christianized, would have the ministry of angels as strong an engine, for the working up heroic poetry, in our religion, as that of the ancients has been to raise theirs by all the fables of their gods, which were only received for truths by the most ignorant and weakest of the people. It is a doctrine almost universally received by Christians, as well protestants as catholics, that there are guardian angels appointed by God Al mighty as his vicegerents, for the protection and government of cities, provinces, kingdoms, and monarchies; and those as well of heathens, as of true believers. All this is so plainly proved from those texts of Daniel, that it admits of no farther controversy. The prince of the Persians, and that other of the Grecians, are granted to be the guardians and protecting ministers of those empires. It cannot be denied, that they were opposite, and resisted one another. St. Michael is mentioned by his name, as the patron of the Jews, and is now taken by the Christians, as the protectorgeneral of our religion. These tutelar genii, who presided over the several people and regions committed to their charge, were watchful over them for good, as far as their commissions could possibly extend. The general purpose and design of all, was certainly the service of their great Creator But it is an undoubted truth, that, for ends best known to the Almighty Majesty of Heaven, his providential designs for the benefit of his creatures, for the debasing and punishing of some nations, and the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were not wholly known to these his ministers; else why those factious quarrels, controversies, and battles, amongst themselves, when they were all united in the same design, the service and honour of their common master? But being instructed only in the general, and zealous of the main design; and, as finite beings, not admitted into the secrets of government, the last resorts of Providence, or capable of discovering the final purposes of God, who can work good out of evil, as he pleases; and irresistibly sways all manner of events on Earth, directing them finally for the best, to his creation in general, and to the ultimate end of his own glory in particular: they must of necessity be sometimes ignorant of the means conducing to those ends, in which alone they can jar and oppose each other. One angel, as we may suppose the prince of Persia, as he is called, judging that it would be more for God's honour, and the benefit of his people, that the Median and Persian monarchy, when delivered from the Babylonish captivity, should still be uppermost: and the patron of the Grecians, to whom the will of God might be more particularly revealed, contending on the other side, for the rise of Alexander and his successors, who were appointed to punish the backsliding Jews, and thereby to put them in mind of their offences, that they might repent, and become more virtuous, and more observient of the law revealed. But how far these controversies and appearing enmities of those glorious creatures may be carried; how these oppositions may best be managed, and by what means conducted, is not my business to show or determine these things must be left to the invention and judgment of the poet: if any of so happy a genius be now living, or any future age can produce a man, who, being conversant in the philosophy of Plato, as it is now accommodated to Christian use; for (as Virgil gives us to understand by his example) he is the only proper person, of all others, for an epic poem, who, to his natural endowments, of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong memory, has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and particularly moral philosophy, the mathematics, geography, and history, and with all these qualifications is born a poet; knows, and can practise, the variety of numbers, and is master of the language in which he writes; if such a man, I say, be now arisen, or shall arise, I am vain enough to think, that I have proposed a model to him, by which he may build a nobler, a more beautiful, and more perfect poem, than any yet extant, since the ancients. There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but, by what I have said, it would have been been easily supplied by a judicious writer. He could not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the good; they have also their design, ever opposite to that of Heaven; and this alone has hitherto been the practice of the moderns : but this imperfect system, if I may call it such, which I have given, will infinitely advance and carry farther that hypothesis of the evil spirits contending with the good. For, being so much weaker since their fall than those blessed beings, of God, of acting ill, as, from their own depraved they are yet supposed to have a permitted power nature, they have always the will of designing it. A great testimony of which we find in holy writ, when God Almighty suffered Satan to appear in the holy synod of the angels (a thing not hitherto drawn into example by any of the poets), and also gave him power over all things belonging to his servant Job, excepting only life. Now what these wicked spirits cannot compass of the superior beings, they may by their fraud by the vast disproportion of their forces to those confederacy, or subserviency to the designs of some and cunning carry farther, in a seeming league, good angel, as far as consists with his purity, to suffer such an aid, the end of which may possibly ledge. This is indeed to suppose a great errour be disguised, and concealed from his finite knowin such a being: yet since a devil can appear like an angel of light; since craft and malice may sometimes blind for a while a more perfect understanding; and lastly, since Milton has given us an example of the like nature, when Satan appearing like a cherub to Uriel, the intelligence of the Sun, circumvented him even in his own province, and passed only for a curious traveller through those new-created regions, that he might observe therein the workmanship of God, and praise him in his works. I know not why, upon the same supposition, or some other, a fiend may not deceive a creature of at least by the connivance, or tacit permission, of more excellency than himself, but yet a creature ; the omniscient Being. Thus, my lord, I have, as briefly as I could, given your lordship, and by you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring in my imagination, and what I had intended to have put in practice (though far unable for the : attempt of such a poem); and to have left the stage, to which my genius never much inclined me, for a work which would have taken up my life in the performance of it. This too, I had intended chiefly for the honour of my native country, to which a poet is particularly obliged: of two subjects, both relating to it, I was doubtful whether I should choose that of king Arthur conquering the Saxons; which, being farther distant in time, gives the greater scope to my invention: or that of Edward the Black Prince, in subduing Spain, and restoring it to the lawful prince, though a great tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruei: which, for the compass of time, including only the expedition of one year; for the greatness of the action, and its answerable event; for the magnanimity of the English hero, opposed to the ingratitude of the person whom he restored, and for the many beautiful episodes which I had interwoven with the principal design, together with the characters of the chiefest English persons; wherein, after Virgil and Spenser, I would have taken occasion to represent my living friends and patrons of the noblest families, and also shadowed the events of future ages, in the succession of our imperial lines with these helps, and those of the machines, which I have mentioned, I might perhaps have done as well as some of my predecessors; or at least chalked out a way for others to amend my errours in a like design. But, being encouraged only by fair words by king Charles II. my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my attempt; and now age has overtaken me, and want, a more insufferable evil, through the change of times, has wholly disenabled me. Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I have had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself, then your lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which, at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service, which one of my mean condition can ever be able to perform, May the Almighty God return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you hereafter. I must not presume to defend the cause for which I now suffer, because your lordship is engaged against it: but the more you are so, the greater is my obligation to you: for your laying aside all the considerations of factions and parties, to do an action of pure disinterested charity. This is one among many of your shining qualities, which distinguish you from others of your rank: but let me add a farther truth, that without these ties of gratitude, and abstracting from them all, I have a most particular inclination to honour you; and, if it were not too bold an expression, to say, I love you. It is no shame to be a poet, though it is to be a bad one. Augustus Cæsar of old, and cardinal Richlieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David and Solomon were such. You, who without flattery, are the best of the present age in England, and would have been so had you been born in any other country, will receive more honour in future ages, by that one excellency, than by all those honours to which your birth has entitled you, or your merits have acquired you. Ne, forte, pudori Sit tibi musa lyræ soleis, & canto Apollo. I have formerly said in this epistle, that I could distinguish your writings from those of any others: it is now time to clear myself from any imputation of self-conceit on that subject. I assume not to myself any particular lights in this discovery; they are such only as are obvious to every man of sense and judgment, who loves poetry, and understands it. Your thoughts are always so remote from the common way of thinking, that they are, as I may say, of another species than the conceptions of other poets; yet, you go not out of nature for any of them: gold is never bred upon the surface of the ground; but lies so hidden and so deep, that the mines of it are seldom found; but the force of waters casts it out from the bowels of mountains, and exposes it amongst the sands of rivers: giving us of her bounty, what we could not hope for by our search. This success attends your lordship's thoughts, which would look like chance, if it were not perpetual, and always of the same tenour. If I grant that there is care in it, it is such a care as would be ineffectual and fruitless in other men. It is the curiosa felicitas which Petronius ascribes to Horace in his odes. We have not wherewithal to imagine so strongly, so justly, and so pleasantly: in short, if we have the same knowledge, we cannot draw out of it the same quintessence: we cannot give it such a term, such a propriety, and such a beauty: something is deficient in the manner, |