The great art of poets is either the adorning and beautifying of truth, or the inventing pleasing and probable fictions. If they invent impossible fables, like some of Æsop's, they ought to have such morals couched under them, as may tend to the instruction of mankind, or the regulation of manners, or they can be of no use; nor can they really delight any but such as would be pleased with Tom Thumb, without these circumstances. But there are some pedants, who will quote authority from the ancients for the faults and extravagancies of some of the moderns; who being able to imitate nothing but the faults of the classic authors, mistake them for their excellencies. I speak with all due reverence to the ancients; for no man esteems their perfections more than myself, though I confess I have not that blind implicit faith in them which some ignorant schoolmasters would impose upon us, to believe in all their errors, and own all their crimes: to some pedants every thing in them is of that authority, that they will create a new figure of rhetoric out of the fault of an old poet. I am apt to believe the same faults were found in them, when they wrote, which men of sense find now; but not the excellencies which schoolmasters would persuade us: yet I must say now, _Nobis non licet esse tam disertis, Musas qui colimus severiores._ MARTIAL. Epipgr. ix. 12. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 163: There was a royal theatre at Whitehall, where this play was twice acted. This playhouse was burned in 1697. The _dancing tree_, refers to this stage direction in the second act: "A Moorish dance is presented by Moors in several habits, who bring in an artificial palm-tree, about which they dance to several antique instruments of music."] [Footnote 164: For Ben Jonson's controversy with Dekker, See Vol. X. p. 451. Dekker was as far superior to Settle, as Dryden was to Jonson.] [Footnote 165: This seems, as conjectured by Mr Malone, to have been some parody on Macbeth, which, strange to tell! had been converted into a sort of opera by D'Avenant. Such burlesque performances were fashionable about this time.] [Footnote 166: These lines are a parody on the following passage in "The Empress of Morocco," (act ii. sc. 1.) which, we are told in the Remarks, was much admired. _The scene opened, is represented the prospect of a large river, with a glorious fleet of ships, supposed to be the navy of Muly Hamet. After the sound of trumpets, and the discharging of guns,_ _Enter King, young Queen_, HAMETALHAZ, _and Attendants._ _Hamet._ Great Sir, your royal father's general Prince Muly Hamet's fleet does homeward sail, And in a solemn and triumphant pride Their course up the great river Tensift guide, Whose gilded currents do new glories take From the reflexion his bright streamers make. The waves a masque of martial pageants yield, A flying army on a floating field. ] PREFACE TO THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD.