Nam certe ex vivo centauri non fit imago, Nulla fuit quoniam talis natura animai:  Verum ubi equi atque hominis, casu, convenit imago, Haerescit facile extemplo, &c.

The same reason may also be alleged for chimeras and the rest.  And poets may be allowed the like liberty, for describing things which really exist not, if they are founded on popular belief.  Of this nature are fairies, pigmies, and the extraordinary effects of magic; for it is still an imitation, though of other men’s fancies:  and thus are Shakespeare’s “Tempest,” his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Witches” to be defended.  For immaterial substances, we are authorised by Scripture in their description:  and herein the text accommodates itself to vulgar apprehension, in giving angels the likeness of beautiful young men.  Thus, after the pagan divinity, has Homer drawn his gods with human faces:  and thus we have notions of things above us, by describing them like other beings more within our knowledge.

I wish I could produce any one example of excellent imaging in all this poem.  Perhaps I cannot; but that which comes nearest it, is in these four lines, which have been sufficiently canvassed by my well-natured censors: 

  Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
  And wanton, in full ease now live at large: 
  Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
  And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie.

I have heard (says one of them) of anchovies dissolved in sauce; but never of an angel in hallelujahs. A mighty witticism! (if you will pardon a new word,) but there is some difference between a laugher and a critic.  He might have burlesqued Virgil too, from whom I took the image. Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam. A city’s being buried, is just as proper on occasion, as an angel’s being dissolved in ease, and songs of triumph.  Mr Cowley lies as open too in many places: 

  Where their vast courts the mother waters keep, &c.

For if the mass of waters be the mothers, then their daughters, the little streams, are bound, in all good manners, to make courtesy to them, and ask them blessing.  How easy it is to turn into ridicule the best descriptions, when once a man is in the humour of laughing, till he wheezes at his own dull jest! but an image, which is strongly and beautifully set before the eyes of the reader, will still be poetry, when the merry fit is over, and last when the other is forgotten.

I promised to say somewhat of Poetic Licence, but have in part anticipated my discourse already.  Poetic Licence, I take to be the liberty which poets have assumed to themselves, in all ages, of speaking things in verse, which are beyond the severity of prose.  It is that particular character, which distinguishes and sets the bounds betwixt oratio soluta, and poetry.  This, as to what regards the thought, or imagination of a poet, consists in fiction: