The first rule which Bossu prescribes to the writer of an heroic poem, and which holds too by the same reason in all dramatic poetry, is to make the moral of the work; that is, to lay down to yourself what that precept of morality shall be, which you would insinuate into the people; as, namely, Homer’s (which I have copied in my “Conquest of Granada,”) was, that union preserves a commonwealth and discord destroys it.  Sophocles, in his OEdipus, that no man is to be accounted happy before his death.  It is the moral that directs the whole action of the play to one centre; and that action or fable is the example built upon the moral, which confirms the truth of it to our experience.  When the fable is designed, then, and not before, the persons are to be introduced, with their manners, characters, and passions.

The manners, in a poem, are understood to be those inclinations, whether natural or acquired, which move and carry us to actions, good, bad, or indifferent, in a play; or which incline the persons to such or such actions.  I have anticipated part of this discourse already, in declaring that a poet ought not to make the manners perfectly good in his best persons; but neither are they to be more wicked in any of his characters, than necessity requires.  To produce a villain, without other reason than a natural inclination to villainy, is, in poetry, to produce an effect without a cause; and to make him more a villain than he has just reason to be, is to make an effect which is stronger than the cause.

The manners arise from many causes; and are either distinguished by complexion, as choleric and phlegmatic, or by the differences of age or sex, of climates, or quality of the persons, or their present condition.  They are likewise to be gathered from the several virtues, vices, or passions, and many other common-places, which a poet must be supposed to have learned from natural philosophy, ethics, and history; of all which, whosoever is ignorant, does not deserve the name of poet.

But as the manners are useful in this art, they may be all comprised under these general heads:  First, they must be apparent; that is, in every character of the play, some inclinations of the person must appear; and these are shown in the actions and discourse.  Secondly, the manners must be suitable, or agreeing to the persons; that is, to the age, sex, dignity, and the other general heads of manners:  thus, when a poet has given the dignity of a king to one of his persons, in all his actions and speeches, that person must discover majesty, magnanimity, and jealousy of power, because these are suitable to the general manners of a king[1].  The third property of manners is resemblance; and this is founded upon the particular characters of men, as we have them delivered to us by relation or history; that is, when a poet has the known character of this or that man before him, he is bound to represent him such, at least not contrary to that which fame has reported him to have been.  Thus, it is not a poet’s choice to make Ulysses choleric, or Achilles patient, because Homer has described them quite otherwise.  Yet this is a rock, on which ignorant writers daily split; and the absurdity is as monstrous, as if a painter should draw a coward running from a battle, and tell us it was the picture of Alexander the Great.