THE ANSWER OF MR. HOBBES TO SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT’S PREFACE BEFORE GONDIBERT. THE ANSWER TO THE PREFACE TO GONDIBERT. SIR, If to commend your poem, I should only say, in general terms, that in the choice of your argument, the disposition of the parts, the maintenance of the characters of your persons, the dignity and vigour of your expression, you have performed all the parts of various experience, ready memory, clear judgment, swift and well-governed fancy: though it were enough for the truth, it were too little for the weight and credit of my testimony. For I lie open to two exceptions, one of an incompetent, the other of a corrupted witness. Incompetent, because I am not a poet; and corrupted with the honour done me by your preface. The former obliges me to say something, by the way, of the nature and differences of poesy. As philosophers have divided the universe, their subject, into three regions, _celestial_, _aerial_, and _terrestial_; so the poets, whose work it is, by imitating human life, in delightful and measured lines, to avert men from vice, and incline them to virtuous and honourable actions, have lodged themselves in the three regions of mankind, _court_, _city_, and _country_, correspondent, in some proportion, to those three regions of the world. For there is in princes, and men of conspicuous power, anciently called _heroes_, a lustre and influence upon the rest of men, resembling that of the heavens; and an insincereness, inconstancy, and troublesome humour in those that dwell in populous cities, like the mobility, blustering, and impurity of the air; and a plainness, and, though dull, yet a nutritive faculty in rural people, that endures a comparison with the earth they labour.