Then, in a flowery valley, set him down On a green bank, and set before him spread Ambrosial fruits, fetch'd from the tree of life, 1 And, from the fount of life, ambrosial drink,ngal ser Or thirst; and, as he fed, angelic quires Thou didst debel, and down from Heaven cast For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou, Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be, But thou, infernal Serpent! shalt not long Or lightning, thou shalt fall from Heaven, trod down Thus they the Son of God, our Saviour meek SAMSON AGONISTES. A DRAMATIC POEM. Τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπυδαίας, κ. τ. λ. ARISTOT. Poet. Cap. 6. Tragedia est imitatio actionis seriæ, &c. per misericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem. OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED TRAGEDY. TRAGEDY, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions; that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so, in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33; and Paræus, commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book, as a tragedy, into acts, distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honour Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Cæsar also had begun his Ajax, but, unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least the best of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which is entitled Christ suffering. This is mentioned 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; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though Ancient Tragedy use no prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defence, or explanation, that which, Martial calls an epistle; in behalf of this tragedy coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from |