Having done him this justice, as my guide, I may do myself so much, as to give an account of what I have performed after him.  I observed then, as I said, what was wanting to the perfection of his “Siege of Rhodes;” which was design, and variety of characters.  And in the midst of this consideration by mere accident, I opened the next book that lay by me, which was “Ariosto,” in Italian; and the very first two lines of that poem gave me light to all I could desire;

  Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amori,
  Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto, &c.

For the very next reflection which I made was this, that an heroic play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroic poem; and, consequently, that love and valour ought to be the subject of it.  Both these Sir William D’Avenant had begun to shadow; but it was so, as first discoverers draw their maps, with headlands, and promontories, and some few outlines of somewhat taken at a distance, and which the designer saw not clearly.  The common drama obliged him to a plot well formed and pleasant, or, as the ancients call it, one entire and great action.  But this he afforded not himself in a story, which he neither filled with persons, nor beautified with characters, nor varied with accidents.  The laws of an heroic poem did not dispense with those of the other, but raised them to a greater height, and indulged him a farther liberty of fancy, and of drawing all things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage, as that is beyond the common words and actions of human life; and, therefore, in the scanting of his images and design, he complied not enough with the greatness and majesty of an heroic poem.

I am sorry I cannot discover my opinion of this kind of writing, without dissenting much from his, whose memory I love and honour.  But I will do it with the same respect to him, as if he were now alive, and overlooking my paper while I write.  His judgment of an heroic poem was this:  “That it ought to be dressed in a more familiar and easy shape; more fitted to the common actions and passions of human life; and, in short, more like a glass of nature, shewing us ourselves in our ordinary habits and figuring a more practicable virtue to us, than was done by the ancients or moderns.”  Thus he takes the image of an heroic poem from the drama, or stage poetry; and accordingly intended to divide it into five books, representing the same number of acts; and every book into several cantos, imitating the scenes which compose our acts.

But this, I think, is rather a play in narration, as I may call it, than an heroic poem.  If at least you will not prefer the opinion of a single man to the practice of the most excellent authors, both of ancient and latter ages.  I am no admirer of quotations; but you shall hear, if you please, one of the ancients delivering his judgment on this question; it is Petronius Arbiter, the most elegant, and one of the most judicious authors of the Latin tongue; who, after he had given many admirable rules for the structure and beauties of an epic poem, concludes all in these following words:—­