ka Romanists uncharitably do of Beza, for a few lascivious sonnets composed by him in his youth. It is not in this sense that poesy is said to be a kind of painting; it is not the picture of the poet, but of things and persons imagined by him. He may be in his own practice and disposition a philosopher, nay a Stoic, and yet speak sometimes with the softness of an amorous Sappho, -ferat & rubus asper amomum. He professes too much the use of fables (though without the malice of deceiving) to have his testimony taken even against himself. Neither would I here be misunderstood, as if I affected so much gravity, as to be ashamed to be thought really in love. On the contrary, I cannot have a good opinion of any man, who is not at least capable of being so. But I speak it to excuse some expressions (if such there be) which may happen to offend the severity of supercilious readers: for much excess is to be allowed in love, and even more in poetry; so we avoid the two unpardonable vices in both, which are obscenity and profaneness, of which I am sure, if my words be ever guilty, they have ill represented my thoughts and intentions. And if, notwithstanding all this, the lightness of the matter here displease any body, he may find wherewithal to content his more serious inclinations in the weight and height of the ensuing arguments. For, as for the Pindaric Odes (which is the third part), I am in great doubt whether they will be understood by most readers; nay, even by very many who are well enough acquainted with the common roads and ordinary tracks of poesy. They either are, or at least were meant to be, of that kind of style which Dion. Halicarnasseus calls, Μεγαλοφυὲς καὶ ἡδὺ μετὰ δεινότητος, and which he attributes to Alcæus: the digressions are many, and sudden, and sometimes long, according to the fashion of all lyriques, and of Pindar above all men living. The figures are unusual and bold, even to temerity, and such as I durst not have to do withal in any other kind of poetry: the numbers are various and irregular, and sometimes (especially some of the long ones) seem harsh and uncouth, if the just measures and cadences be not observed in the pronunciation. So that almost all their sweetness and numerosity (which is to be found, if I mistake not, in the roughest, if rightly repeated) lies, in a manner, wholly at the mercy of the reader. I have briefly described the nature of these verses, in the Ode entituled The Resurrection and though the liberty of them may incline a man to believe them easy to be composed, yet the undertaker will find it otherwise -Ut sibi quivis Speret idem; sudet multùm, frustráque laboret I come now to the last part, which is Davideis, or : an heroical poem of the troubles of David: which I designed into twelve books; not for the tribes' sake, but after the pattern of our master Virgil; and intended to close all with that most poetical and excellent elegy of David on the death of Saul and Jonathan for I had no mind to carry him quite on to his anointing at Hebron, because it is the custom of heroic poets (as we see by the examples of Homer and Virgil, whom we should do ill to forsake to imitate others) never to come to the full end of their story; but only so near, that every one may see it; as men commonly play not out the game, when it is evident that they can win it, but lay down their cards, and take up what they have won. This, I say, was the whole design, in which there are many noble and fertile arguments behind; as, the barbarous cruelty of Saul to the priests at Nob, the several flights and escapes of David, with the manner of his living in the Wilderness, the funeral of Samuel, the love of Abigail, the sacking of Ziglag, the loss and recovery of David's wives from the Amalekites, the witch of Endor, the war with the Philistines, and the battle of Gilboa ; all which I meant to interweave, upon several occasions, with most of the illustrious stories of the Old Testament, and to embellish with the most remarkable antiquities of the Jews, and of other nations before or at that age. But I have had neither leisure hitherto, nor have appetite at present, to finish the work, or so much as to revise that part which is done, with that care which I resolved to bestow upon it, and which the dignity of the matter well deserves. For what worthier subject could have been chosen, among all the treasuries of past times, than the life of this young prince, who, from so small beginnings, through such infinite troubles and oppositions, by such miraculous virtues and excellencies, and with such incomparable variety of wonderful actions and accidents, became the greatest monarch that ever sat on the most famous throne of the whole earth? Whom should a poet more justly seek to honour, than the highest person who ever honoured his profession? whom, a Christian poet, rather than the man after God's own heart, and the man who had that sacred preeminence above all other princes, to be the best and mightiest of that royal race from whence Christ himself, according to the flesh, disdained not to descend? When I consider this, and how many other bright and magnificent subjects of the like nature the holy Scripture affords and proffers, as it were, to poesy; in the wise managing and illustrating whereof, the glory of God Almighty might be joined with the singular utility and noblest delight of mankind; it is not without grief and indignation that I behold that divine science employing all her inexhaustible riches of wit and eloquence, either in the wicked and beggarly flattery of great persons, or the unmanly idolizing of foolish women, or the wretched affectation of scurril laughter, or at best on the confused antiquated dreams of senseless fables and metamorphoses. Amongst all holy and consecrated things, which the devil ever stole and alienated from the service of the Deity, as altars, temples, sacrifices, prayers, and the like, there is none that he so universally and so long usuṛpt, as poetry. It is time to recover it out of the tyrant's hands, and to restore it to the kingdom of God, who is the father of it. It is time to baptize it in Jordan, for it will never become clean by bathing in the water of Damascus. There wants, methinks, but the conversion of that, and the Jews, for the accomplishment of the kingdom of Christ. And, as men, before their receiving of the faith, do not, without some carnal reluctancies, apprehend the bonds and fetters of it, but find it afterwards to be the truest and greatest liberty; it will fare no otherwise with this art, after the regeneration of it; it will meet with wonderful variety of new, more beautiful, and more delightful objects; neither will it want room, by being confined to heaven. There is not so great a lye to be found in any poet as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is essential to good poetry. Were there never so wholesome nourishment to be had (but alas, it breeds nothing but diseases) out of these boasted feasts of love and fables; yet, methinks, the unalterable continuance of the diet should make us nauseate it: for it is almost impossible to serve up any new dish of that kind. |