them are always good.  The humour of the people is now for comedy; therefore, in hope to please them, I write comedies rather than serious plays:  and so far their taste prescribes to me.  But it does not follow from that reason, that comedy is to be preferred before tragedy in its own nature; for that, which is so in its own nature, cannot be otherwise, as a man cannot but be a rational creature:  But the opinion of the people may alter, and in another age, or perhaps in this, serious plays may be set up above comedies.

This I think a sufficient answer; if it be not, he has provided me of an excuse:  it seems, in his wisdom, he foresaw my weakness, and has found out this expedient for me, “That it is not necessary for poets to study strict reason, since they are so used to a greater latitude than is allowed by that severe inquisition, that they must infringe their own jurisdiction, to profess themselves obliged to argue well.”

I am obliged to him for discovering to me this back door; but I am not yet resolved on my retreat; for I am of opinion, that they cannot be good poets, who are not accustomed to argue well.  False reasonings and colours of speech are the certain marks of one who does not understand the stage:  for moral truth is the mistress of the poet as much as of the philosopher; poesy must resemble natural truth, but it must be ethical.  Indeed, the poet dresses truth, and adorns nature, but does not alter them: 

Ficta voluptatis causa sint proxima veris.

Therefore, that is not the best poesy, which resembles notions of things, that are not, to things that are:  though the fancy may be great, and the words flowing, yet the soul is but half satisfied when there is not truth in the foundation.  This is that which makes Virgil be preferred before the rest of poets.  In variety of fancy, and sweetness of expression, you see Ovid far above him; for Virgil rejected many of those things which Ovid wrote.  “A great wit’s great work is to refuse,” as my worthy friend Sir John Berkenhead has ingeniously expressed it:  you rarely meet with any thing in Virgil but truth, which therefore leaves the strongest impression of pleasure in the soul.  This I thought myself obliged to say in behalf of poesy; and to declare, though it be against myself, that when poets do not argue well, the defect is in the workmen, not in the art.

And now I come to the boldest part of his discourse, wherein he attacks not me, but all the ancients and moderns; and undermines, as he thinks, the very foundations on which Dramatic Poesy is built.  I could wish he would have declined that envy which must of necessity follow such an undertaking, and contented himself with triumphing over me in my opinions of verse, which I will never hereafter dispute with him; but he must pardon me if I have that veneration for Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille, that I dare not serve him in such a cause, and against such heroes, but rather fight under their protection, as Homer reports of little Teucer, who shot the Trojans from under the large buckler of Ajax Telamon.