For what else concerns this play, I would tell the reader, that it is regular, according to the strictest of dramatic laws; but that it is a commendation which many of our poets now despise, and a beauty which our common audiences do not easily discern. Neither indeed do I value myself upon it; because, with all that symmetry of parts, it may want an air and spirit (which consists in the writing) to set it off. 'Tis a question variously disputed, whether an author may be allowed as a competent judge of his own works. As to the fabric and contrivance of them, certainly he may; for that is properly the employment of the judgment; which, as a master-builder, he may determine, and that without deception, whether the work be according to the exactness of the model; still granting him to have a perfect idea of that pattern by which he works, and that he keeps himself always constant to the discourse of his judgment, without admitting self-love, which is the false surveyor of his fancy, to intermeddle in it. These qualifications granted (being such as all sound poets are presupposed to have within them), I think all writers, of what kind soever, may infallibly judge of the frame and contexture of their works. But for the ornament of writing, which is greater, more various, and _bizarre_ in poesy than in any other kind, as it is properly the child of fancy; so it can receive no measure, or at least but a very imperfect one, of its own excellences or failures from the judgment. Self-love (which enters but rarely into the offices of the judgment) here predominates; and fancy (if I may so speak), judging of itself, can be no more certain, or demonstrative of its own effects, than two crooked lines can be the adequate measure of each other. What I have said on this subject may, perhaps, give me some credit with my readers, in my opinion of this play, which I have ever valued above the rest of my follies of this kind; yet not thereby in the least dissenting from their judgment, who have concluded the writing of this to be much inferior to my "Indian Emperor." But the argument of that was much more noble, not having the allay of comedy to depress it; yet if this be more perfect, either in its kind, or in the general notion of a play, it is as much as I desire to have granted for the vindication of my opinion, and what as nearly touches me, the sentence of a royal judge. Many have imagined the character of Philocles to be faulty; some for not discovering the queen's love, others for his joining in her restraint: But though I am not of their number, who obstinately defend what they have once said, I may, with modesty, take up those answers which have been made for me by my friends; namely, that Philocles, who was but a gentleman of ordinary birth, had no reason to guess so soon at the queen's passion; she being a person so much above him, and, by the suffrages of all her people, already destined to Lysimantes: Besides, that he was prepossessed (as the