Poetry more philosophi accurate not the wise, for whom alone (according to Pythagoras) it is ordained. T. RYMER, Preface to Rapin, 1674. [The ancients] found that history, grossly taken, was cal and more neither proper to instruct nor apt to please; and therefore than history. they would not trust history for their examples, but refined upon the history, and thence contrived something more philosophical and more accurate than history. Philosophy the guide of poetry. Poetry and history. Poetic justice. T. RYMER, Tragedies of the Last Age, 1678. Poetry is to follow Nature; philosophy must be his guide history and fact in particular cases of John an Oaks or John of Styles are no warrant or direction for a poet. Therefore Aristotle is always telling us that poetry is σπουδαιότερον καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον, is more general and abstracted, is led more by the philosophy, the reason and nature of things than history, which only records things higlety piglety, right or wrong, as they happen. T. RYMER, A Short View of Tragedy, 1693. [Sophocles and Euripides] were for teaching by examples, in a graver way, yet extremely pleasant and delightful. And finding in history the same end happen to the righteous and to the unjust, virtue often oppressed and wickedness on the throne, they saw these particular yesterday-truths were imperfect and unproper to illustrate the universal and eternal truths by them intended. Finding also that this unequal distribution of rewards and punishments did perplex the wisest, and by the atheist was made a scandal to the Divine Providence, they concluded that a poet must of necessity see justice exactly administered, if he intended to please. For, said they, if the world can scarce be satisfied with God Almighty, whose holy will and purposes are not to be comprehended, a poet, in these matters, shall never be pardoned, who, they are sure, is not incomprehensible, whose ways and walks may without impiety be penetrated and examined. T. RYMER, Tragedies of the Last Age, 1678. [E]very tragedy ought to be a very solemn lecture, Poetic inculcating a particular providence, and showing it plainly justice. protecting the good, and chastising the bad. . . J. DENNIS, Advancement of Modern Poetry (Epistle Dedicatory), 1701. trine of The English writers of tragedy are possessed with a A criticism notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent of the docperson in distress, they ought not to leave him till they poetic justice. have delivered him out of his troubles, or made him triumph over his enemies. This error they have been led into by a ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism, that they are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice. Who were the first that established this rule I know not; but I am sure it has no foundation in nature, in reason, or in the practice of the ancients. We find that good and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave. . . For this reason the ancient writers of tragedy treated men in their plays, as they are dealt with in the world, by making virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most agreeable manner. J. ADDISON, Spectator (No. 40), 1711. It is the part humour the of a poet to by mending and perfecting nature. [B]ecause the mind of man requires something more perfect in matter than what it finds there, and can never meet with any sight in nature which sufficiently answers its imagination highest ideas of pleasantness; or, in other words, because the imagination can fancy to itself things more great, strange, or beautiful than the eye ever saw, and is still sensible of some defect in what it has seen; on this account it is the part of a poet to humour the imagination in its own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he describes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he describes a fiction. He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advances The poet has the modelling of nature in his own hands. A poet is not obliged to confine an historian. which she makes from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the successive production of plants and flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it the more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together, and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the products of every climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrrh may be met with in every hedge, and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out an agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer scents and higher colours than any that grow in the gardens of nature. In a word, he has the modelling of nature in his own hands, and may give her what charms he pleases, provided he does not reform her too much, and run into absurdities by endeavouring to excel. J. ADDISON, Spectator (No. 418), 1712. [A] poet is not obliged to the rules that confine an the rules that historian. . . Poets are allowed the same liberty in their descriptions and comparisons, as painters in their draperies and ornaments: their personages may be dressed, not exactly in the same habits which they wore, but in such as make them appear more graceful. In this case probability must atone for the want of truth. Probability must atone for the want of truth. M. PRIOR, Preface to Solomon, 1718. Ficta voluptatis causâ sint proxima veris. Probability. That which jars with probability, that which shocks sense and reason can never be excused in poetry or painting. C. LAMOTTE, Essay upon Poetry and Painting, 1730. ... I conclude with the just and pertinent sentiments of the Abbé du Bos, on allegorical action. "It is impossible for a piece, whose subject is an allegorical action, to interest us very much. . . . Our heart requires truth even in fiction Truth even itself; and when it is presented with an allegorical fiction, int it cannot determine itself. . . to enter into the sentiments of those chimerical personages. . We may therefore apply the words of Lactantius upon this occasion. 'Poetic licence has its bounds, beyond which you are not permitted to carry your fiction. A poet's art consists in making a good representation of things that might have really happened and embellishing them with elegant images. T. WARTON, Observations on the Fairy Queen, 1754. in fiction of the doc Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished A criticism and virtue rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in trine of real life, the poet is certainly at liberty to give it prosperity Justice. on the stage. For if poetry has an imitation of reality, how are its laws broken by exhibiting the world in its true form? The stage may sometimes gratify our wishes; but, if it be truly the mirror of life, it ought to show us sometimes what we are to expect. S. JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets (Addison), 1779-1781. SUPERNATURAL FICTION blance of utmost limit There are some that are not pleased with fiction, unless The resemit be bold, not only to exceed the work, but also the possi- truth the bility of nature: they would have impenetrable armours, ut poetical enchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying liberty. horses, and a thousand other such things, which are easily feigned by them that dare. [I dissent] . . . (without assenting to those that condemn either Homer or Virgil) only from those that think the beauty of a poem consisteth in the exorbitancy of the fiction. For as truth is the bound of historical, so the resemblance of truth is the utmost limit of poetical liberty. In old time amongst the heathen such strange fictions and metamorphoses were not so remote from the articles of their faith as they are now from ours, and therefore were not so unpleasant. Beyond the actual works of nature a poet may now go; but beyond the conPossibility. ceived possibility of nature, never, I can allow a geographer to make in the sea a fish or a ship which by the scale of his map would be two or three hundred mile long, and think it done for ornament, because it is done without the precincts of his undertaking; but when he paints an elephant so, I presently apprehend it as ignorance, and a plain confession of terra incognita. T. HOBBES, Answer to Davenant, 1650. [I]f any man object the improbabilities of a spirit appearing, or of a palace raised by magic; I boldly answer him, A poet is not that an heroic poet is not tied to a bare representation of presentation what is true, or exceeding probable; but that he may let tied to a re of what is true or exceeding probable. Popular be lief in magic. Spectres and magic may unnatural. himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation poetry. Some men think they have raised a great argument be in nature, against the use of spectres and magic in heroic poetry, by therefore not saying they are unnatural; but whether they or I believe there are such things is not material; 'tis enough that, for aught we know, they may be in nature; and whatever is, or may be, is not properly unnatural. Hippo centaurs. Chimeras. J. DRYDEN, Essay of Heroic Plays, 1672. [T]he fiction of some beings which are not in nature (second notions, as the logicians call them) has been founded on the conjunction of two natures, which have a real separate being. So hippocentaurs were imaged, by joining the natures of a man and horse together; as Lucretius tells us, who has used this word of image oftener than any of the poets The same reason may also be alleged for chimeras and |