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Agamemnon in a long War, and thereby weaken'd, and at last overthrown, with a great Tree hewn round about, and then falling by little and little leisurely.

So that neither these two Descriptions nor the two 5 Comparisons can be compared together. The Image of a man lying on the ground is one thing; the Image of falling, especially of a Kingdom, is another. This therefore gives no advantage to Virgil over Homer. 'Tis true that this Description of the Felling and Falling of a Tree is exceed10 ing graceful. But is it therefore more than Homer could have done if need had been? Or is there no Description in Homer of somewhat else as good as this? Yes, and in many of our English Poets now alive. If it then be lawful for Julius Scaliger to say, that if Jupiter would 15 have described the fall of a Tree, he could not have mended this of Virgil, it will be lawful for me to repeat an old Epigram of Antipater, to the like purpose, in favour of Homer:

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The Writer of the famous Trojan War,

And of Ulysses Life, O Jove, make known,
Who, whence he was; for thine the Verses are,
And he would have us think they are his own.

The seventh and last commendation of an Heroique Poem consisteth in Amplitude and Variety; and in this Homer 25 exceedeth Virgil very much, and that not by superfluity of words, but by plenty of Heroique matter, and multitude of Descriptions and Comparisons (whereof Virgil hath translated but a small part into his Eneads), such as are the Images of Shipwracks, Battles, Single Combats, 30 Beauty, Passions of the mind, Sacrifices, Entertainments, and other things, whereof Virgil (abating what he borrows of Homer) has scarce the twentieth part. It is no wonder therefore if all the ancient Learned men both of Greece and Rome have given the first place in Poetry to Homer. It is 35 rather strange that two or three, and of late time and

but Learners of the Greek tongue, should dare to contradict so many competent Judges both of Language and Discretion. But howsoever I defend Homer, I aim not thereby at any reflection upon the following Translation. Why then did I write it? Because I had nothing else to do. 5 Why publish it? Because I thought it might take off my Adversaries from shewing their folly upon my more serious Writings, and set them upon my Verses to shew their wisdom. But why without Annotations? Because I had no hope to do it better than is already done 10 by Mr. Ogilby.

T. HOBBES.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

PREFACE TO POEMS

1656

AT my return lately into England, I met by great accident

(for such I account it to be, that any Copy of it should be extant any where so long, unless at his house who printed it) a Book entituled, The Iron Age, and published 5 under my name during the time of my absence. I wondred

very much how one who could be so foolish to write so ill Verses, should yet be so Wise to set them forth as another Mans rather than his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the Bastard upon 10 such a person, whose stock of Reputation is, I fear, little

enough for maintenance of his own numerous Legitimate Off-spring of that kinde. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the Author to put forth some of my Writings under his own name, rather then his own 15 under mine. He had been in that a more pardonable Plagiary, and had done less wrong by Robbery then he does by such a Bounty; for no body can be justified by the Imputation even of anothers Merit, and our own course Cloathes are like to become us better then those of another 20 mans, though never so rich: but these, to say the truth, were so beggarly, that I my self was ashamed to wear them. It was in vain for me that I avoided censure by the concealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus Executed in Effigie; and impossible it is for any good 25 Name to be in safety, if the malice of Witches have the power to consume and destroy it in an Image of their own making. This indeed was so ill made, and so unlike, that

I hope the Charm took no effect. So that I esteem my self less prejudiced by it then by that which has been done to me since, almost in the same kinde, which is the publication of some things of mine without my consent or knowledge, and those so mangled and imperfect that I 5 could neither with honor acknowledge nor with honesty quite disavow them. Of which sort was a Comedy called The Guardian, printed in the year 1650, but made and acted before the Prince, in his passage through Cambridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy War; 10 or rather neither made nor acted, but rough-drawn onely, and repeated; for the haste was so great that it could neither be revised or perfected by the Author, nor learnt without-Book by the Actors, nor set forth in any measure tolerably by the Officers of the College. After the Repre- 15 sentation (which, I confess, was somewhat of the latest) I began to look it over, and changed it very much, striking out some whole parts, as that of the Poet and the Souldier; but I have lost the Copy, and dare not think it deserves the pains to write it again, which makes me omit it in this 20 publication, though there be some things in it which I am not ashamed of, taking in the excuse of my age and small experience in humane conversation when I made it. But as it is, it is onely the hasty first-sitting of a Picture, and therefore like to resemble me accordingly. From this 25 which had hapned to my self, I began to reflect upon the fortune of almost all Writers, and especially Poets, whose Works (commonly printed after their deaths) we finde stuffed out, either with counterfeit pieces, like false Money put in to fill up the Bag, though it adde nothing to the 30 sum, or with such, which though of their own Coyn, they would have called in themselves for the baseness of the Alloy whether this proceed from the indiscretion of their Friends, who think a vast heap of Stones or Rubbish a better Monument then a little Tomb of Marble, or by the 35

unworthy avarice of some Stationers, who are content to diminish the value of the Author, so they may encrease the price of the Book, and like Vintners with sophisticate mixtures, spoil the whole vessel of wine, to make it yield 5 more profit. This has been the case with Shakespear, Fletcher, Johnson, and many others, part of whose Poems I should take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me; neither would I make any scruple to cut off from some the un10 necessary yong Suckars, and from others the old withered Branches; for a great Wit is no more tyed to live in a Vast Volume then in a Gigantic Body; on the contrary, it is commonly more vigorous, the less space it animates. And as Statius says of little Tydeus,

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Totos infusa per artus

Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus.

I am not ignorant that, by saying this of others, I expose my self to some Raillery, for not using the same severe discretion in my own case, where it concerns me nearer. 20 But though I publish here more then in strict wisdom I ought to have done, yet I have supprest and cast away more then I publish; and for the ease of my self and others, have lost, I believe, too, more then both. And upon these considerations I have been perswaded to overcome all the 25 just repugnances of my own modesty, and to produce these Poems to the light and view of the World; not as a thing that I approved of in it self, but as a lesser evil, which I chose rather then to stay till it were done for me by some body else, either surreptitiously before, or avowedly after, 30 my death; and this will be the more excusable, when the Reader shall know in what respects he may look upon me as a Dead, or at least a Dying Person, and upon my Muse in this action, as appearing, like the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and assisting at her own Funeral.

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For to make my self absolutely dead in a Poetical capacity,

Stat. i. l.

Theb.

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