of houses and families; to this tend buildings, foundations, and
monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration,
and in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the
monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer
continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a
syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples,
castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to
have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar; no, nor
of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals
cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But
the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from
the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they
fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their
seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and
opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was
thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to
place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of
their fruits; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships
pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to
participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the
other? [1]


But let us now consider what the drama should be. And first, it is not a
copy, but an imitation, of nature. This is the universal principle of
the fine arts. In all well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from
that balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts! How natural! we
say;--but the very wonder that caused the exclamation, implies that we
perceived art at the same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself.