But as others have laboured to carry out our thoughts, and to entertain them with all manner of delights abroad; 'tis the peculiar character of this author, that he has taught us (with Antoninus) to meditate upon ourselves; that he has disclosed to us greater secrets at home; self-reflection being the only way to valuable and true knowledge, which consists in that rare science of a man's self, which the moral philosopher loses in a crowd of definitions, divisions and distinctions: the historian cannot find it among all his musty records, being far better acquainted with the transactions of a thousand years past, than with the present age, or with himself: the writer of fables and romances wanders from it, in following the delusions of a wild fancy, chimeras and fictions that do not only exceed the works, but also the possibility of Nature. Whereas the resemblance of truth is the utmost limits of poetical liberty, which our author has very religiously observed; for he has not only placed and connected together the most amiable images of all those powers that are in our souls, but he has furnished and squared his matter like a true philosopher; that is, he has made both body and soul, colour and shadow of his poem, out of the storehouse of his own mind, which gives the whole work a real and natural beauty; when that which is borrowed out of books, (the boxes of counterfeit complexion) shews well or ill, as it has more or less likeness to the natural. But our author is beholding to none but himself; and by knowing himself thoroughly, he has arrived to know much; which appears in his admirable variety of well-chosen metaphors and similitudes that cannot be found within the compass of a narrow knowledge. For this reason the poem, on account of its intrinsic worth, would be as lasting as the Iliad or the Æneid, if the language 'tis wrote in were as immutable as that of the Greeks and Romans.