[Footnote 34:  Rev. Luke Milbourne, who had attacked Dryden’s Virgil.]

[Footnote 35:  Sir Richard Blackmore, who had censured Dryden for the indecency of his writings.]

[Footnote 36:  “The argument from abuse to use is not valid.”]

[Footnote 37:  “You, Demetrius and Tigellius, I bid lament among the chairs of your scholars.”  Blackmore had once been a schoolmaster.—­Noyes.]

PREFACE TO JOSEPH ANDREWS

BY HENRY FIELDING (1742)[A]

THE COMIC EPIC IN PROSE

As it is possible the mere English reader may have a different idea of romance with the author of these little volumes; and may consequently expect a kind of entertainment, not to be found, nor which was even intended, in the following pages; it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language.

The EPIC, as well as the DRAMA, is divided into tragedy and comedy.  HOMER, who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us the pattern of both these, tho’ that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy.  And perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original.

And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose:  for tho’ it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely, metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other head, nor to assign it a particular name to itself.

Thus the Telemachus of the archbishop of Cambray appears to me of the epic kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer, indeed, it is much fairer and more reasonable to give it a name common with that species from which it differs only in a single instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in no other.  Such are those voluminous works, commonly called Romances, namely Clelia, Cleopatra, Astraea, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others which contain, as I apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment.