witchcraft of Erictho, will somewhat atone for him, who was, indeed,
bound up by an ill-chosen and known argument, to follow truth with
great exactness. For my part, I am of opinion, that neither Homer,
Virgil, Statius, Ariosto, Tasso, nor our English Spencer, could have
formed their poems half so beautiful, without those gods and spirits,
and those enthusiastic parts of poetry, which compose the most noble
parts of all their writings. And I will ask any man who loves heroic
poetry (for I will not dispute their tastes who do not), if the ghost
of Polydorus in Virgil, the Enchanted Wood in Tasso, and the Bower of
Bliss in Spencer (which he borrows from that admirable Italian) could
have been omitted, without taking from their works some of the
greatest beauties in them. And if any man object the improbabilities
of a spirit appearing, or of a palace raised by magic; I boldly answer
him, that an heroic poet is not tied to a bare representation of what
is true, or exceeding probable; but that he may let himself loose to
visionary objects and to the representation of such things, as,
depending not on sense, and therefore not to be comprehended by
knowledge, may give him a freer scope for imagination. It is enough
that, in all ages and religions, the greatest part of mankind have
believed the power of magic, and that there are spirits or spectres
which have appeared. This, I say, is foundation enough for poetry; and
I dare farther affirm, that the whole doctrine of separated beings,
whether those spirits are incorporeal substances, (which Mr Hobbes,
with some reason, thinks to imply a contradiction) or that they are a
thinner and more aërial sort of bodies, (as some of the fathers have
conjectured) may better be explicated by poets than by philosophers or
divines. For their speculations on this subject are wholly poetical;
they have only their fancy for their guide; and that, being sharper in
an excellent poet, than it is likely it should in a phlegmatic, heavy
gownman, will see farther in its own empire, and produce more