eye: be seen at all too near, than too far off the but granting that a poem is a picture to be viewed at a great distance, the distance and the bigness ought to be so suited, as though the picture be much bigger than the life, yet it must not seem so; and what miserable mistakes some poets make for want of knowing this truly, I leave to men of sense to judge; and by the way, let us consider that dramatick poetry, especially the English, brings the picture nearer the eye, than any other sort of poetry. But some will say after this, what licence is left. for poets? Certainly the same that good poets ever took, without being faulty, (for surely the best were so sometimes, because they were but men,) and that licence is fiction; which kind of poetry is like that of landscape-painting; and poems of this nature, though they be not vera, ought to be verisimilia. The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind or the regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these circumstances. But there are some pedants, who will quote authority from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the classick authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all due reverence to the ancients, for no man esteems their perfections more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to believe in all their errours, and own all their crimes: to some pedants every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new figure of rhetorick out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade us: yet I must say now, Nobis non licet esse tam disertis, * Martial. Epigr. ix. 12. to imitate nothing by which men of us: yet I mu No M PREFACE TO THE FIRST PART OF ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHE L.' Ir is not my intention to make an apology for my poem; some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am 3 The first part of this poem was published in folio, without the author's name, in November, 1681; as appears from Mr. Bindley's copy. It was undertaken, as we learn from Tate's Preface to the Second Part, at the desire of King Charles the Second, with a view to defeat the projects of the Earl of Shaftesbury and his adherents, who at this time were engaged in a conspiracy, the principal object of which was to exclude the Duke of York from the throne, and to secure the succession to the Duke of Monmouth, on the death of the King. per "Of this poem," (says Dr. Johnson,)" in which sonal satire was applied to the support of publick principles, and in which therefore every mind was interested, the reception was eager, and the sale so large, that my father, an old bookseller, told me he had not known it equalled but by Sacheverell's trial.-The reason of this general perusal Addison has attempted to derive from the delight which the mind feels in the investigation of secrets; and thinks that curiosity to decypher the names procured readers to the poem. There is no need to enquire why |