I shall therefore examine it by the Rules of Epic Poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or AEneid, in the Beauties which are essential to that kind of Writing.  The first thing to be considered in an Epic Poem, is the Fable, [4] which is perfect or imperfect, according as the Action which it relates is more or less so.  This Action should have three Qualifications in it.  First, It should be but One Action.  Secondly, It should be an entire Action; and, Thirdly, It should be a great Action. [5] To consider the Action of the Iliad, AEneid, and Paradise Lost, in these three several Lights. Homer to preserve the Unity of his Action hastens into the Midst of Things, as Horace has observed:  [6] Had he gone up to Leda’s Egg, or begun much later, even at the Rape of Helen, or the Investing of Troy, it is manifest that the Story of the Poem would have been a Series of several Actions.  He therefore opens his Poem with the Discord of his Princes, and [artfully [7]] interweaves, in the several succeeding Parts of it, an Account of every Thing [material] which relates to [them [8]] and had passed before that fatal Dissension.  After the same manner, AEneas makes his first Appearance in the Tyrrhene Seas, and within Sight of Italy, because the Action proposed to be celebrated was that of his settling himself in Latium.  But because it was necessary for the Reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding Parts of his Voyage, Virgil makes his Hero relate it by way of Episode in the second and third Books of the AEneid.  The Contents of both which Books come before those of the first Book in the Thread of the Story, tho for preserving of this Unity of Action they follow them in the Disposition of the Poem. Milton, in imitation of these two great Poets, opens his Paradise Lost with an Infernal Council plotting the Fall of Man, which is the Action he proposed to celebrate; and as for those great Actions, which preceded, in point of Time, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World, (which would have entirely destroyed the Unity of his principal Action, had he related them in the same Order that they happened) he cast them into the fifth, sixth, and seventh Books, by way of Episode to this noble Poem.

Aristotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the Unity of his Fable, [9] tho at the same time that great Critick and Philosopher endeavours to palliate this Imperfection in the Greek Poet, by imputing it in some measure to the very Nature of an Epic Poem.  Some have been of opinion, that the AEneid [also labours [10]] in this Particular, and has Episodes which may be looked upon as Excrescencies rather than as Parts of the Action.  On the contrary, the Poem, which we have now under our Consideration, hath no other Episodes than such as naturally arise from the Subject, and yet is filled with such a Multitude of astonishing [Incidents,[11]] that it gives us at the same time a Pleasure of the greatest Variety, and of the greatest [Simplicity; uniform in its Nature, tho diversified in the Execution [12]].