There are some that are not pleased with fiction, unless it be bold; not only to exceed the _work_, but also the _possibility_ of nature; they would have impenetrable armours, enchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying horses, and a thousand other such things, which are easily feigned by them that dare. Against such I defend you, without assenting to those that condemn either Homer or Virgil; by dissenting only from those that think the beauty of a poem consisteth in the exorbitancy of the fiction. For as truth is the bound of historical, so the resemblance of truth is the utmost limit of poetical liberty. In old time amongst the heathen, such strange fictions and metamorphoses were not so remote from the articles of their faith, as they are now from ours, and therefore were not so unpleasant. Beyond the actual works of nature a poet may now go; but beyond the conceived possibility of nature, never. I can allow a geographer to make in the sea, a fish or a ship, which by the scale of his map would be two or three hundred miles long, and think it done for ornament, because it is done without the precincts of his undertaking: but when he paints an elephant so, I presently apprehend it as ignorance, and a plain confession of _terra incognita_. As the description of great men and great actions is the constant design of a poet; so the descriptions of worthy circumstances are necessary accessions to a poem, and being well performed, are the jewels and most precious ornaments of poesy. Such in Virgil are the funeral games of Anchises, the duel of Æneas and Turnus, &c. And such in yours, are _the Hunting_, _the Battle_, _the City Mourning_, _the Funeral_, _the House of Astragon_, _the Library and the Temple_; equal to his, or those of Homer whom he imitated. There remains now no more to be considered but the expression, in which consisteth the countenance and colour of a beautiful Muse; and is given her by the poet out of his own provision, or is borrowed from others. That which he hath of his own, is nothing but experience and knowledge of nature, and specially human nature; and is the true and natural colour. But that which is taken out of books, the ordinary boxes of counterfeit complexion, shows well or ill, as it hath more or less resemblance with the natural; and are not to be used without examination unadvisedly. For in him that professes the imitation of nature, as all poets do, what greater fault can there be, than to betray an ignorance of nature in his poem; especially, having a liberty allowed him, if he meet with any thing he cannot master, to leave it out?