TO satisfie the Curiosity of those who will give themselves the trouble of reading the ensuing POEM, I think my self oblig'd to render them a Reason, why I publish an OPERA which was never acted. In the first place I shall not be asham'd to own, that my chiefest Mo­tive, was the Ambition which I acknowledg'd in the Epistle. I was desirous to lay at the feet of so Beautiful and Excellent a Princess, a Work which I confess was unwor­thy her, but which I hope she will have the goodness to forgive. I was also induc'd to it in my own defence: many hundred Copies of it being dispers'd, abroad without my knowledge or consent: so that every one gathering new faults, it became at length a Libel against me; and I saw, with some disdain, more nonsence than either I, or as bad a Poet, could have cram'd into it, at a Months warning, in which time 'twas wholly Written, and not since Revis'd. After this, I cannot without injury to the deceas'd Author of Paradice Lost, but acknowledge that this POEM has receiv'd its entire Foundation, part of the Design, and many of the Ornaments, from him. What I have borrow'd, will be so easily discern'd from my mean Productions, that I shall not need to point the Rea­der to the places: And, truly, I should be sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to compare them together: The Original being undoubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime POEMS, which either this Age or Nation has produc'd. And though I could not refuse the partiality of my Friend, who is pleased to commend me in his Verses, I hope they will rather be esteem'd the effect of his love to me, than of his deliberate and sober judgment. His Genius is able to make [Page] beautiful what he pleases: Yet, as he has been too favorable to me, I doubt not but he will hear of his kindness from many of our Contemporaries. For, we are fallen into an Age of Illiterate, Censorious, and Detracting people, who thus qualified, set up for Critiques.

In the first place I must take leave to tell them, that they whol­ly mistake the Nature of Criticism, who think its business is prin­cipally to find fault. Criticism, as it was first instituted by Ari­stotle, was meant a Standard of judging well. The chiefest part of which is to observe those Excellencies which should delight a reasonable Reader. If the Design, the Conduct, the Thoughts, and the Expressions of a POEM, be generally such as pro­ceed from a true Genius of Poetry, the Critique ought to pass his judgement in favor of the Author. 'Tis malicious and unmanly to snarl at the little lapses of a Pen, from which Virgil himself stands not exempted. Horace acknowledges that honest Homer nods sometimes: He is not equally awake in every Line: But he leaves it also as a standing Measure for our judgments,

And Longinus, who was undoubtedly, after Aristotle, the grea­test Critique amongst the Greeks, in his twenty seventh Chapter [...], has judiciously preferr'd the sublime Genius that some­times erres, to the midling or indifferent one which makes few faults, but seldome or never rises to any Excellence. He com­pares the first to a Man of large possessions, who has not leisure to consider of every slight expence, will not debase himself to the management of every trifle: particular summs are not layd out or spar'd to the greatest advantage in his Oeconomy: but are some­times suffer'd to run to waste, while he is only careful of the Main. On the other side, he likens the Mediocrity of Wit, to one of a mean fortune, who manages his store with extream frugality, or rather parsimony: but who with fear of running into profuseness, [Page] never arrives to the magnificence of living. This kind of Genius writes, indeed correctly. A wary man he is in Grammar; ve­ry nice as to Solaecism or Barbarism, judges to a hair of little decencies, knows better than any Man what is not to be writ­ten: and never hazards himself so far as to fall: but plods on deliberately, and, as a grave Man ought, is sure to put his staff before him; in short, he sets his heart upon it; and with won­derful care makes his business sure: that is, in plain English, neither to be blam'd, nor prais'd.—I could, sayes my Author, find out some blemishes in Homer: and am perhaps, as naturally in­clin'd to be disgusted at a fault as another Man: But, after all, to speak impartially, his faillings are such, as are only marks of humane frailty: they are little Mistakes, or rather Negligences, which have escap'd his pen in the fervor of his writing; the sub­limity of his spirit carries it with me against his carelesness: And though Apollonius his Argonautes, and Theocritus, his Eidul­lia, are more free from Errors, there is not any Man of so false a judgment, who would choose rather to have been Apollonius or Theocritus, than Homer.

'Tis worth our consideration, a little to examine how much these Hypercritiques of English Poetry, differ from the opinion of the Greek and Latine Judges of Antiquity: from the Italians and French who have succeeded them; and, indeed, from the ge­neral tast and approbation of all Ages. Heroique Poetry, which they contemn, has ever been esteem'd, and ever will be, the greatest work of humane Nature: In that rank has Aristotle plac'd it, and Longinus is so full of the like expressions, that he abundantly confirms the others Testimony. Horace as plainly delivers his opinion, and particularly praises Homer in these Verses.

[Page]And in another place modestly excluding himself, from the num­ber of Poets, because he only writ Odes and Satyres, he tells you a Poet is such an one,

Quotations are superfluous in an establish'd truth: othern ise I could reckon up amongst the Moderns, all the Italian Commen­tators on Aristotle's Book of Poetry; and amongst the French, the greatest of this Age, Boileau and Rapin: the latter of which is alone sufficient, were all other Critiques lost, to teach anew the rules of writing. Any Man who will seriously consider the nature of an Epique Poem, how it agrees with that of Poetry in general, which is to instruct and to delight; what actions it describes, and what persons they are chiefly whom it insorms, will find it a work which indeed is full of difficulty in the attempt, but admirable when 'tis well performed. I write not this with the least intention to undervalue the other parts of Poetry: for Co­medy is both excellently instructive, and extreamly pleasant: Sa­tyre lashes Vice into Reformation, and humor represents folly, so as to render it ridiculous. Many of our present Writers are emi­nent in both these kinds; and particularly the Author of the Plain Dealer, whom I am proud to call my Friend, has oblig'd all honest and vertuous Men, by one of the most bold, most general, and most useful Satyres which has ever been presented on the Eng­lish Theater. I do not dispute the preference of Tragedy; let every Man enjoy his tast: but 'tis unjust, that they who have not the least notion of Heroique writing, should therefore condemn the pleasure which others receive from it, because they cannot com­prehend it. Let them please their appetites in eating what they like: but let them not force their dish on all the Table. They who would combat general Authority, with particular Opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better, than other men. Are all the flights of Heroique Poetry, to be concluded bombast, unnatural, and meer madness, because they [Page] are not affected with their Excellencies? 'Tis just as reasonable as to conclude there is no day, because a blind Man cannot distin­guish of Light and Colours? ought they not rather, in modesty, to doubt of their own judgments, when they think this or that ex­pression in Homer, Virgil, Tasso, or Milton's Paradice, to be too far strain'd, than positively to conclude, that 'tis all fustian, and meer nonsence? 'Tis true, there are limits to be set betwixt the boldness and rashness of a Poet; but he must understand those limits who pretends to judge, as well as he who undertakes to write: and he who has no liking to the whole, ought in reason to be excluded from censuring of the parts. He must be a Lawyer before he mounts the Tribunal: and the Judicature of one Court too, does not qualifie a man to preside in another. He may be an excellent Pleader in the Chancery, who is not fit to rule the Common Pleas. But I will presume for once to tell them, that the boldest strokes of Poetry, when they are manag'd Art­fully, are those which most delight the Reader.

Virgil and Horace, the severest Writers of the severest Age, have made frequent use of the hardest Metaphors, and of the strongest Hyperboles: And in this case the best Authority is the best Argument. For generally to have pleas'd, and through all ages, must bear the force of Universal Tradition. And if you would appeal from thence to right Reason, you will gain no more by it in effect, than First, to set up your Reason against those Authors; and Secondly, against all those who have admir'd them. You must prove why that ought not to have pleas'd, which has pleas'd the most Learn'd, and the most Judicious: and to be thought knowing, you must first put the fool upon all Mankind. If you can enter more deeply, than they have done, into the Causes and Res­sorts of that which moves pleasure in a Reader, the Field is open, you may be heard: but those Springs of humane Nature are not so easily discover'd by ever superficial Judge: It requires Philosophy as well as Poetry, to sound the depth of all the Pas­sions; what they are in themselves, and how they are to be pro­vok'd: and in this Science the best Poets have excell'd. Aristotle rais'd the Fabrique of his Poetry, from observation of those [Page] things, in which Euripides, Sophocles, and AEschylus pleas'd: He consider'd how they rais'd the Passions, and thence has drawn rules for our Imitation. From hence have sprung the Tropes and Figures, for which they wanted a name, who first practis'd them, and succeeded in them, Thus I grant you, that the know­ledge of Nature was the Original Rule; and that all Poets ought to study her; as well as Aristotle and Horace her Inter­pretors. But then this also undeniably follows, that those things which delight all Ages, must have been an imitation of Nature; which is all I contend. Therefore is Rhetorick made an Art: therefore the Names of so many Tropes and Figures were invent­ed: because it was observ'd they had such and such an effect upon the Audience. Therefore Catachreses and Hyperboles have found their place amongst them; not that they were to be avoided, but to be us'd judiciously, and plac'd in Poetry, as heightnings and shadows are in Painting, to make the Figure bolder, and cause it to stand off to sight.

sayes Virgil in his Eclogues: and speaking of Leander in his Georgiques,

In both of these you see he fears not to give Voice and Thought to things inanimate.

Will you arraign your Master Horace, for his hardness of Ex­pression, when he describes the death of Cleopatra? and sayes she did Asperos tractare serpentes, ut atrum corpore combibe­ret venenum? because the Body in that action, performs what is proper to the mouth?

As for Hyperboles, I will neither quote Lucan, nor Statius, Men of an unbounded imagination, but who often wanted the [Page] Poyze of Judgement. The Divine Virgil was not liable to that exception; and yet he describes Polyphemus thus:

In imitation of this place, our Admirable Cowley thus paints Goliah.

Where the two words seem'd, and methought, have mollify'd the Figure: and yet if they had not been there, the fright of the Israelites might have excus'd their belief of the Giants Stature.

In the 8th of the AEneids, Virgil paints the swiftness of Ca­milla thus:

You are not oblig'd, as in History, to a literal belief of what the Poet says; but you are pleas'd with the Image, without being couzen'd by the Fiction.

Yet even in History, Longinus quotes Herodotus on this occasi­on of Hyperboles. The Lacedemonians, sayes he, at the straights of Thermopylae, defended themselves to the last extremity: and when their Arms fail'd them, fought it out with their Nails and Teeth: till at length, (the Persians shooting continually upon them) they lay buried under the Arrows of their enemies. It is not reasonable, (continues the Critique) to believe that Men could defend themselves with their Nails and Teeth from an arm'd multitude: nor that they lay buried under a pile of Darts and Arrows; and yet there wants not probability for the Figure: [Page] because the Hyperbole seems not to have been made for the sake of the description; but rather to have been produc'd from the occasion.

'Tis true, the boldness of the Figures are to be hidden, sometimes by the address of the Poet; that they may work their effect upon the Mind, without discovering the Art which caus'd it. And therefore they are principally to be us'd in passion; when we speak more warmly, and with more precipitation than at other times: for then, Si vis me flere dolendum est primùm ipsi tibi; the Poet must put on the Passion he endeavours to represent: A man in such an occasion is not cool enough, either to reason rightly, or to talk calmly. Aggravations are then in their proper places, Interoga­tions, Exclamations, Hyperbata, or a disorder'd connection of discourse, are graceful there, because they are Natural. The summ of all depends on what before I hinted, that this boldness of ex­pression is not to be blam'd; if if be manag'd by the coolness and discretion, which is necessary to a Poet.

Yet before I leave this subject, I cannot but take notice how dis-ingenuous our Adversaries appear: All that is dull, insipid, languishing and without sinews in a Poem, they call an imitation of Nature: they onely offend our most equitable Judges, who think beyond them; and lively Images and Elocution, are never to be forgiven.

What Fustian, as they call it, have I heard these Gentlemen find out in Mr. Cowley's Odes? I acknowledge my self unworthy to defend so excellent an Author; neither have I room to do it here: onely in general I will say, that nothing can appear more beautiful to me, than the strength of those Images which they condemn.

Imaging is, in it self, the very heighth and life of Poetry. 'Tis, as Loginus describes it, a Discourse, which, by a kind of Enthusi­asm, or extraordinary emotion of the Soul, makes it seem to us, that we behold those things which the Poet paints, so as to be pleas'd with them, and to admire them.

[Page]If Poetry be imitation, that part of it must needs be best, which describes most lively our Actions and Passions; our Vir­tues and our Vices; our Follies and our Humors: for neither is Comedy without its part of Imaging: and they who do it best, are certainly the most excellent in their kind. This is too plainly prov'd to be denied: but how are Poetical Fictions, how are Hippocentaures and Chymaeras, or how are Angels and immaterial Substances to be Imag'd? which some of them are things quite out of Nature: others, such whereof we can have no notion? this is the last refuge of our Adversaries; and more than any of them have yet had the wit to object against us. The answer is easie to the first part of it. The fiction of some Beings which are not in Nature, (second Notions as the Logicians call them) has been founded on the conjunction of two Natures, which have a real separate Being. So Hippocentaures were imagin'd, by joyning the Natures of a Man and Horse together; as Lucretius tells us, who has us'd this word of Image oftner than any of the Poets.

The same reason may also be alledg'd for Chymaera's and the rest. And Poets may be allow'd the like liberty, for describing things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular be­lief: of this nature are Fairies, Pigmies, and the extraordina­ry effects of Magick: for 'tis still an imitation, though of other mens fancies: and thus are Shakespeare's Tempest, his Midsum­mer nights Dream, and Ben. Johnson's Masque of Witches to be defended. For Immaterial Substances we are authoriz'd by Scripture in their description: and herein the Text accommodates it self to vulgar apprehension, in giving Angels the likeness of beau­tiful young men. Thus, after the Pagan Divinity, has Homer drawn his Gods with humane Faces: and thus we have notions of things [Page] above us, by describing them like other beings more within our knowledge.

I wish I could produce any one example of excellent imaging in all this Poem: perhaps I cannot: but that which comes nearest it, is in these four lines, which have been sufficiently canvas'd by my well-natur'd Censors.

I have heard (sayes one of them) of Anchove's dissolv'd in Sauce; but never of an Angel in Hallelujahs. A mighty Witty­cism, (if you will pardon a new word!) but there is some diffe­rence between a Laugher and a Critique. He might have Burlesqu'd Virgil too, from whom I took the Image. Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam. A Cities being buried is just as pro­per an occasion, us an Angels being dissolv'd in Ease, and Songs of Triumph. Mr. Cowley lies as open too in many places:

Where there vast Courts the Mother Waters keep, &c. for if the mass of Waters be the Mothers, then their Daughters, the lit­tle streams, are bound in all good manners, to make Court'sie to them, and ask them Blessing. How easie 'tis to turn into ridicule, the best descriptions, when once a man is in the humor of laughing, till he wheezes at his own dull jest! but an Image which is strong­ly and beautifully set before the eyes of the Reader, will still be Poetry, when the merry fit is over: and last when the other is for­gotten.

I promis'd to say somewhat of Poetique Licence, but have in part anticipated my discourse already. Poetique Licence I take to be the Liberty, which Poets have assum'd to themselves in all ages, of speaking things in Verse, which are beyond the se­verity [Page] of Prose. 'Tis that particular character, which distinguishes and sets the bounds betwixt Oratio soluta, and Poetry. This, as to what regards the thought, or imagination of a Poet, consists in Fiction: but then those thoughts must be express'd; and here arise two other branches of it: for if this Licence be included in a single word, it admits of Tropes: if in a Sentence or Propo­sition, of Figures: bath which are of a much larger extent, and more forcibly to be us'd in Verse than Prose. This is that Birth­right which is deriv'd to us from our great Forefathers, even from Homer down to Ben. and they who would deny it to us, have, in plain terms, the Foxes quarrel to the Grapes; they can­not reach it.

How far these Liberties are to be extended, I will not presume to determine here, since Horace does not. But it is certain that they are to be varied, according to the Language and Age in which an Author writes. That which would be allow'd to a Grecian Poet, Martial tells you, would not be suffer'd in a Roman. And 'tis evident that the English, does more nearly follow the strictness of the latter, than the freedoms of the former. Con­nection of Epithetes, or the conjunction of two words in one, are frequent and elegant in the Greek, which yet Sir Philip Sidney, and the Translator of Du Bartas, have unluckily attempted in the English; though this I confess, is not so proper an Instance of Poetique Licence, as it is of variety of Idiom in Languages.

Horace a little explains himself on this subject of Licentia Poetica; in these Verses,

He would have a Poem of a piece: not to begin with one thing and end with another: he restrains it so far, that Thoughts of an unlike Nature, ought not to be joyn'd together: That were indeed [Page] to make a Chaos. He tax'd not Homer, nor the Divine Virgil, for interessing their gods in the Wars of Troy and Italy; nei­ther had he now liv'd, would he have tax'd Milton, as our false Critiques have presum'd to do, for his choice of a super­natural Argument: but he would have blam'd my Author, who was a Christian, had he introduc'd into his Poem Heathen Dei­ties, as Tasso is condemn'd by, Rapin on the like occasion: and as Camoens, the Author of the Lusiads, ought to be cen­sur'd by all his Readers, when he brings in Bacchus and Christ into the same Adventure of his Fable. From that which has been said, it may be collected, that the definition of Wit (which has been so often attempted, and ever unsuccessfully by many Poets,) is only this: That it is a propriety of Thoughts and Words; or in other terms, Thought and Words, elegantly adapted to the Subject. If our Critiques will joyn issue on this Definition, that we may convenire in aliquo tertio; if they will take it as a granted Principle, 'twill be easie to put an end to this dispute: No man will disagree from anothers judgement, concerning the dig­nity of Style, in Heroique Poetry: but all reasonable Men will conclude it necessary, that sublime Subjects ought to be adorn'd with the sublimest, and (consequently often) with the most figura­tive expressions. In the mean time I will not run into their fault of imposing my opinions on other men, any more than I would my Writings on their tast: I have onely laid down, and that superficially enough, my present thoughts; and shall be glad to be taught better, by those who pretend to reform our Poetry.