satisfactory notions on those dark and doubtful problems.

Some men think they have raised a great argument against the use of
spectres and magic in heroic poetry, by saying they are unnatural; but
whether they or I believe there are such things, is not material; it
is enough that, for aught we know, they may be in nature; and whatever
is, or may be, is not properly unnatural. Neither am I much concerned
at Mr Cowley's verses before "Gondibert," though his authority is
almost sacred to me: It is true, he has resembled the old epic poetry
to a fantastic fairy-land; but he has contradicted himself by his own
example: For he has himself made use of angels and visions in his
"Davideis," as well as Tasso in his "Godfrey."

What I have written on this subject will not be thought a digression
by the reader, if he please to remember what I said in the beginning
of this essay, that I have modelled my heroic plays by the rules of an
heroic poem. And if that be the most noble, the most pleasant, and the
most instructive way of writing in verse, and withal the highest
pattern of human life, as all poets have agreed, I shall need no other
argument to justify my choice in this imitation. One advantage the
drama has above the other, namely, that it represents to view what the
poem only does relate; and, _Segnius irritant animum demissa per
aures, quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus_, as Horace tells us.

To those who object my frequent use of drums and trumpets, and my
representations of battles, I answer, I introduced them not on the
English stage: Shakespeare used them frequently; and though Jonson
shews no battle in his "Catiline," yet you hear from behind the scenes
the sounding of trumpets, and the shouts of fighting armies. But, I
add farther, that these warlike instruments, and even their