Reason: both their Morals, and a Wisdom peculiar to their Climate, seem there to over-rule and guide another sort of Men in another World. Porus, however, whom Quintus Curtis describes an utter stranger to the Greeks and Persians, is here purely French. Instead of transporting us to the Indies, he is carried into France; where he is so well acquainted with our humour, that he seems to have been born, or at least to have pass'd the greatest part of his life among us.
They that undertake to represent some Hero of antient times, should enter into the Genius of the Nation to which he belong'd, of the time in which he liv'd, and, particularly, into his own. A Writer ought to describe a King of Asia, otherwise than a Roman Consul: one should speak like an absolute Monarch, who disposes of his Subjects as his Slaves; the other like a Magistrate, who only puts the Laws in execution, and makes their Authority respected by a free People. An old Roman should be describ'd furious for the publick good, and moved by a fierce sense of Liberty, different from a flatterer of Tiberius's time, who knew nothing but interest, and abandon'd himself to the Slavery of the age. We should not make the same Description of Persons of the same condition and the same time, when History gives us different characters of them. It would be ridiculous to make the same Description of Cato and Cesar, Catiline and Cicero, Brutus and Mark Anthony, under pretence, that they liv'd at the same time, in the same Republick. The spectator, who sees these Antients represented upon our Theatres, follows the same Rules to judge exactly of them, as the Poet doth to describe them well; and the better to succeed in this, he removes his mind from all that he sees in fashion; he endeavours to disengage himself from the humour of his own time; and renoun-
