their Great Creator. But it is an undoubted truth, that, for ends best known to the Almighty Majesty of heaven, his providențial designs for the benefit of his creatures, for the debasing and punishing of some nations, and the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were not wholly known to these his ministers; else why those factious quarrels, controversies, and battles amongst themselves, when they were all united in the same design, the service and honour of their common master? But being instructed only in the general, and zealous of the main design; and, as finite beings, not admitted into the secrets of government, the last resorts of providence, or capable of discovering the final purposes of God, who can work good out of evil as he pleases, and irresistibly sways all manner of events on earth, directing them finally for the best, to his creation in general, and to the ultimate end of his own glory in particular; they must, of necessity, be sometimes ignorant of the means conducing to those ends, in which alone they can jar and oppose each other. One angel, as we may suppose-the Prince of Persia, as he is called, judging, that it would be more for God's honour, and the benefit of his people, that the Median and Persian monarchy, which delivered them from the Babylonish captivity, should still be uppermost; and the patron of the Grecians, to whom the will of God might be more particularly revealed, contending, on the other side, for the rise of Alexander and his successors, who were appointed to punish the backsliding Jews, and thereby to put them in mind of their offences, that they might repent, and become more virtuous, and more observant of the law revealed. But how far these controversies, and appearing enmities, of those glorious creatures may be carried; how these oppositions may be best managed, and by what means con

ducted, is not my business to show or determine; these things must be left to the invention and judgement of the poet; if any of so happy a genius be now living, or any future age can produce a man, who, being conversant in the philosophy of Plato, as it is now accommodated to Christian use, (for, as Virgil gives us to understand by his example, that is the only proper, of all others, for an epic poem,) who, to his natural endowments, of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong memory, has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and particularly moral philosophy, the mathematics, geography, and history, and with all these qualifications is born a poet; knows, and can practise the variety of numbers, and is master of the language in which he writes ;—if such a man, I say, be now arisen, or shall arise, I am vain enough to think, that I have proposed a model to him, by which he may build a nobler, a more beautiful, and more perfect poem, than any yet extant since the ancients.

There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but, by what I have said, it would have been easily supplied by a judicious writer. He could not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the good; they have also their design, ever opposite to that of heaven; and this alone has hitherto been the practice of the moderns: but this imperfect system, if I may call it such, which I have given, will infinitely advance and carry farther that hypothesis of the evil spirits contending with the good. For, being so much weaker, since their fall, than those blessed beings, they are yet supposed to have a permitted power from God of acting ill, as, from their own depraved nature, they have always the will of designing it. A great testimony of which we find in holy writ, when God Almighty suffered

Satan to appear in the holy synod of the angels, (a thing not hitherto drawn into example by any of the poets,) and also gave him power over all things belonging to his servant Job, excepting only life.

Now, what these wicked spirits cannot compass, by the vast disproportion of their forces to those of the superior beings, they may, by their fraud and cunning, carry farther, in a seeming league, confederacy, or subserviency to the designs of some good angel, as far as consists with his purity to suffer such an aid, the end of which may possibly be disguised, and concealed from his finite knowledge. This is, indeed, to suppose a great error in such a being yet since a devil can appear like an angel of light; since craft and malice may sometimes blind, for a while, a more perfect understanding; and, lastly, since Milton has given us an example of the like nature, when Satan, appearing like a cherub to Uriel, the intelligence of the sun, circumvented him even in his own province, and passed only for a curious traveller through those new-created regions, that he might observe therein the workmanship of God, and praise him in his works,-I know not why, upon the same supposition, or some other, a fiend may not deceive a creature of more excellency than himself, but yet a creature; at least, by the connivance, or tacit permission, of the Omniscient Being.

Thus, my lord, I have, as briefly as I could, given your lordship, and by you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring in my imagination, and what I had intended to have put in practice, (though far unable for the attempt of such a poem,) and to have left the stage, (to which my genius never much inclined me,) for a work which would have taken up my life in the performance of it. This, too, I had intended chiefly for the honour.

of my native country, to which a poet is particularly obliged. Of two subjects, both relating to it, I was doubtful whether I should choose that of King Arthur conquering the Saxons, which, being farther distant in time, gives the greater scope to my invention; or that of Edward, the Black Prince, in subduing Spain, and restoring it to the lawful prince, though a great tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruel: which, for the compass of time, including only the expedition of one year; for the greatness of the action, and its answerable event; for the magnanimity of the English hero, opposed to the ingratitude of the person whom he restored; and for the many beautiful episodes, which I had interwoven with the principal design, together with the characters of the chiefest English persons; (wherein, after Virgil and Spenser, I would have taken occasion to represent my living friends and patrons of the noblest families, and also shadowed the events of future ages, in the succession of our imperial line,)—with these helps, and those of the machines, which I have mentioned, I might perhaps have done as well as some of my predecessors, or at least chalked out a way for others to amend my errors in a like design; but being encouraged only with fair words by King Charles II., my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my attempt; and now age has overtaken me, and want, a more insufferable evil, through the change of the times, has wholly disenabled me. Though I must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your lordship, and the eternal memory of your charity, that, since this revolution, wherein I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had served more faithfully than profitably to myself,-then your

lordship was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a most bountiful present, which, at that time, when I was most in want of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service, which one of my mean condition can ever be able to perform. May the Almighty God return it for me, both in blessing you here, and rewarding you hereafter! I must not presume to defend the cause for which I now suffer, because your lordship is engaged against it; but the more you are so, the greater is my obligation to you, for your laying aside all the considerations of factions and parties, to do an action of pure disinterested charity. This is one amongst many of your shining qualities, which distinguish you from others of your rank. But let me add a farther truth, that, without these ties of gratitude, and abstracting from them all, I have a most particular inclination to honour you; and, if it were not too bold an expression, to say, Í I love you. It is no shame to be a poet, though it is to be a bad one. Augustus Cæsar of old, and Cardinal Richlieu of late, would willingly have been such; and David and Solomon were such. who, without flattery, are the best of the present age in England, and would have been so, had you been born in any other country, will receive more honour in future ages, by that one excellency, than by all those honours to which your birth has entitled you, or your merits have acquired you.

You

I have formerly said in this epistle, that I could dis