The restrained humanism of the Preface is noticeable. Thus, although the critical concerns of the age lead Trapp to seek to annex "clear Ideas" "to the Words, _Action_, _Fable_, _Incident_, and _Episode_," there is nothing in his writing resembling the prolegomena to the _Aeneid_ in the Delphin edition,[7] prolegomena that define epic from the doctrine of Aristotle as the imitation of one action, illustrious, complete, of a certain magnitude, which by narration in hexameter verse raises eminent men to the prime virtues by delight and admiration, proceeds to define the _actio_, _fabula_, _mores_, _sententia_, and _dictio_ in the abstract, and then demonstrates that the definitions fit the _Aeneid_ (_ergo_ it is an epic poem). This is scientific method ossified. On the other hand, if one compares Dryden's Dedication of the _Aeneid_, Trapp equally eschews the quirky digressiveness (and the wholesale borrowings), which give to Dryden's writing both its sense of personal and spontaneous insight and yet its prolixity and mere messiness. Trapp had studied the art to blot. The reader is spared Dryden's extended and pointless discussion (at second hand) of how long the action of the _Aeneid_ takes, let alone whether this is the right length for an epic action or whether Aeneas was too lacrymose to be a hero (presumably Trapp thought that those who will believe that will believe anything). Likewise, Dryden's political insights, gathered as much from his own experience as from Roman history, are also swiftly passed by for more aesthetic concerns. Perhaps the view of Dryden (and Pope) that the _Aeneid_ was a party piece like _Absalom and Achitophel_ was unbalanced,[8] but Trapp might have reflected that, if any man knew about political poetry, it was John Dryden and that the _Aeneid_ has a place in the history of the Roman civil wars. But the Oxford professor was more concerned with the sublime and beautiful.