Actors what Names he pleases: And he does not as the Satyrists, who speak only of particular Things. But in Tragedy they make use of Names ready made to their hands. This makes us more readily believe the thing to be possible; for Things that have never yet been done, we are not obliged to think possible: But what has been already done, is without all Dispute possible; since it would never have been done, had it been impossible. Yet in some Tragedies, there is but one or two known Names, and all the rest are feigned. Nay, in some others there is not one known Name, as in the Tragedy of Agathon, call'd The FLOWER, where all the Names, as well as Things, are feigned and invented. And yet it came off with Applause."
In favour of our Subject 'tis, that we cite what Aristotle says in this passage, concerning the Tragick Fable. Nor is this a wresting of the Text, since this great Master lays it down as his first [1]Precept in the Epopéa, That we ought to prepare the Fable thereof as for Tragedy.
'Tis to be observ'd, that to make the thing probable, and to perswade Men of its Possibility, from its having been done already, Aristotle orders us to put the Fable not under a known Action, but only under known Names. This makes good what we before alledged, viz.[2]That the Poet should think of making his Action probable, when he gives Names to the Actors. This is the practice of those who make Histories of their own Inventions. The better to perswade the World of the Truth of what they say, they name the Places and the Persons; and the more these Names are known, the more Credit they meet with. Homer has acquitted himself so very handsomely in this Matter, that the Art he had of feigning the best of any Man in the World, is one of the Commendations he deserved from the mouth of [3]Aristotle himself.
We conclude then that Homer in his Practice, and Aristotle in his Precepts, are exactly of the same mind; that Homer had no other Design but to form the Manners of his Country-men, by proposing to them, as Horace says, what was profitable or unprofitable, what was honourable or dishonourable: But that he did not undertake to rehearse any particular Action of Achilles or Ulysses. He made his Fable, and laid the Design of his Poems, without so much as thinking on these Princes; and afterwards, he did them the Honour to bestow their Names on the Heroes he had feign'd.
In other Histories of the Trojan War we do not indeed read of this Quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, which Homer has taken for the Subject-Matter of his Iliad: And what is no less con-
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