The PREFACE.
take it. None but Men of the most exalted Souls, warmest Thoughts, liveliest Fancies, and deepest Judgments, are fit for such a noble Enterprize. Every Man, we see, who has but an Ordinary Capacity, thinks himself Scholar enough to be a Physician, a Lawyer, or a Divine: But the poor Pretender is a little more modest in his pretences to Epick Poetry. Here he stands off, and keeps at as awful a distance from Parnassus, as the trembling Israelites of old did from the burning Mount. Nay the Poetasters themselves, who have ventur'd at all the lesser sorts of Poems, yet knowing their own strength, have with all reverence receeded from so high an Undertaking.
So vast a Genius does this sort of Poetry require, that if we will rely on the testimony of Rapin, one of the ablest and most impartial Criticks this Age or any other Age since Aristotle and Horace, has produced, we shall find that there have been but only two, Homer and Virgil, who have wrote in this way with any tolerable success. This Judicious Critick mentions several of the Greek Poets, such as Coluthus, who wrote of the Rape of Hellen; Tryphiodorus, who gives an account of the taking of Troy; Musæus, who wrote the History of Leander; Apollonius Rhodius, who relates the Expedition of the Argonauts; Quintus Calaber, who undertook to write the Supplement to the Iliad and Odysseis; and Nonnus, who wrote the History of the Birth, Adventures, Victories, and Apotheosis of Bacchus: He likewise mentions several of the Latin Poets, such as Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus, Valerius Faccus, and Claudian; but withall takes Notice how far short all these fall of the Perfections of the other two. As for the Moderns, he takes notice of several among the Italians, namely Dante, Petrarch, Boccace, Boyardo, Oliviero, Ariosto, Tasso, Sannazarius and Vida; but he thinks the three first deserve not thevery
