Now enter and begin to save mankind. 635 Thus they the Son of God our Saviour meek Sung victor, and from heav'nly feast refresh'd Brought on his way with joy; he unobferv'd Home to his mother's house private return'd. THE END. Ariftot. Poet. Cap. 6. Tragedia mimefis praxeos Spondaias, &c. Tragœdia eft imitatio actionis feriæ, &c. per mifericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum luftrati onem. M 2 Of that fort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy. T RAGEDY, as it was anciently compos'd, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems: therefore faid by Ariftotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and fuch like paffions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, ftirr'd up by reading or feeing those paffions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for fo in phyfic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, four against four, falt to remove falt humors. Hence philofophers and other graveft writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illuftrate their difcourfe. The Apoftle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to infert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. xv. 33. and Paræus commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book as a tragedy, into acts diftinguish'd each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and fong between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have labor'd not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honor Dionyfius the elder was no less ambitious, than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Auguftus Cæfar also had begun his Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinish'd. Seneca the philofopher is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least the beft beft of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the fanctity of his perfon to write a tragedy, which is intitled Chrift fuffering. This is mention'd to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; hap'ning through the poets error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic fadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar perfons, which by all judicious hath been counted abfurd; and brought in without difcretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient tragedy use no prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defense, or explanation, that which Martial calls an Epiftle; in behalf of this tragedy coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much before-hand may be epiftl'd; that chorus is here introduc'd after the Greek manner, not ancient only but modern, and ftill in ufe among the Italians. In the modeling therefore of this poem, with good reason, the Ancients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more authority and fame. The measure of verfe us'd in the chorus is of all forts, call'd by the Greeks Monoftrophic, or rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antiftrophe or Epod, which were a kind of ftanza's fram'd only for the music, then us'd with the chorus that fung; not effential to the poem, and therefore not material; or being divided into ftanza's or pauses, they may be call'd Allæo |