I have detained your lordship longer than I intended in this dispute of preference betwixt the epic poem and the drama, and yet have not formally answered any of the arguments which are brought by Aristotle on the other side, and set in the fairest light by Dacier. But I suppose, without looking on the book, I may have touched on some of the objections; for, in this address to your lordship, I design not a treatise of heroic poetry, but write in a loose epistolary way, somewhat tending to that subject, after the example of Horace, in his First Epistle of the Second Book to Augustus Cæsar, and in that to the Piso's, which we call his "Art of Poetry;" in both of which he observes no method that I can trace, whatever Scaliger the father, or Heinsius, may have seen, or rather think they had seen. I have taken up, laid down, and resumed as often as I pleased, the same subject; and this loose proceeding I shall use through all this prefatory dedication. Yet all this while I have been sailing with some side-wind or other toward the point I proposed in the beginning,--the greatness and excellency of a heroic poem, with some of the difficulties which attend that work. The comparison, therefore, which I made betwixt the epopee and the tragedy, was not altogether a digression; for it is concluded on all hands, that they are both the master-pieces of human wit. In the mean time, I may be bold to draw this corollary from what has been already said, that the file of heroic poets is very short; all are not such who have assumed that lofty title in ancient or modern ages, or have been so esteemed by their partial and ignorant admirers. There have been but one great Ilias, and one Æneïs, in so many ages. The next, but the next with a long interval betwixt, was the Jerusalem;[39] I mean not so much in distance of time, as in excellency. After these three are entered, some lord-chamberlain should be appointed, some critic of authority should be set before the door, to keep out a crowd of little poets, who press for admission, and are not of quality. Mævius would be deafening your lordship's ears with his _Fortunam Priami cantabo, et nobile bellum_--