than the highest person who ever honoured his profeffion? whom a Chriftian poet, rather than the man after God's own heart, and the man who had that facred preeminence above all other princes, to be the beft and mightiest of that royal race from whence Chrift himself, according to the flesh, difdained not to descend?

WHEN I Confider 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 wife managing and illuftrating whereof the glory of God Almighty might be joined with the fingular utility and nobleft delight of mankind; it is not without grief and indignation that I behold that divinefcience employing all her inexhaustible riches of wit and eloquence, either in the wicked and beggarly flattery of great perfons, or the unmanly idolizing of foolish women, or the wretched affectation of scurril laughter, or at beft on the confused antiquated

I

antiquated dreams of fenfelefs fables and metamorphofes. Amongst all holy and confecrated things, which the devil ever ftole and alienated from the fervice of the Deity; as altars, temples, facrifices, prayers, and the like; there is none that he fo univerfally, and fo long ufurpt, 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 Damafcus. 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 fome carnal reluctancies apprehend the bonds and fetters of it, but find it afterwards to be the trueft and greatest liberty: it will fare no otherwife with this art, after the regeneration of it; it will meet with wonderful variety of new, more beautiful, and more delightful objects; neither will

G 3

will it want room, by being confined to heaven.

THERE is not fo great a lye to be found in any poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that lying is effential to good poetry. Were there never fo wholesome nourishment to be had (but alas, it breeds nothing but diseases) out of these boasted feafts of love and fables; yet, methinks, the unalterable continuance of the diet fhould make us nauseate it: for it is almoft impoffible to ferve up any new difh of that kind. They are all but the cold-meats of the ancients, new-heated, and new set forth. I do not at all wonder that the old poets made fome rich crops out of thefe grounds; the heart of the foil was not then wrought out with continual tillage; but what can we expect now, who come a gleaning, not after the first reapers, but after the very beggars? Befides, though those mad ftories of the gods and heroes feem in themselves fo ridi

culous;

culous; yet they were then the whole body (or rather chaos) of the theology of thofe times. They were believed by all, but a few philofophers, and perhaps fome atheists; and ferved to good purpose among the vulgar (as pitiful things as they are), in ftrengthening the authority of law with the terrors of confcience, and expectation of certain rewards and unavoidable punishments. There was no other religion; and therefore that was better than none at all. But to us, who have no need of them, to us, who deride their folly, and are wearied with their impertinencies; they ought to appear no better arguments for verse, than those of their worthy fucceffors, the knights errant. What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit or learning in the story of DEUCALION than in that of NOAH? Why will not the actions of SAMPSON afford as plentiful matter as the labours of HERCULES? Why is not JEPTHA's daughter as good a woman as IPHIGENIA? and the friendship of DAVID

G4

DAVID and JONATHAN more worthy cele bration than that of THESEUS and PERITHOUS? Does not the paffage of Moses and the Ifraelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetical variety than the voyages of ULYSSES or NEAS? Are the obfolete thread-bare tales of Thebes and Troy half fo ftored with great, heroical, and fupernatural actions (fince verse will needs find or make fuch), as the wars of JOSHUA, of the Judges, of DAVID, and divers others? Can all the transformations of the gods give such copious hints to flourish and expatiate on, as the true miracles of Chrift, or of his prophets and apostles? What do I instance in these few particulars? All the books of the Bible are either already moft admirable and exalted pieces of poefy, or are the best materials in the world for it,

YET, though they be in themselves fo proper to be made ufe of for this purpose ; none but a good artift willknow how to

do