true believers. All this is so plainly proved from those texts of Daniel, that it admits of no farther controversy. The Prince of the Persians, and that other of the Grecians, are granted to be the guardians and protecting ministers of those empires. It cannot be denied, that they were opposite, and resisted one another. St. Michael is mentioned by his name, as the patron of the Jews, and is now taken by the Christians, as the protector general of our religion. These tutelar Genii, who presided over the several people and regions committed to their charge, were watchful over them for good, as far as their commissions could possibly extend. The general purpose and design of all was certainly the service of their great CREATOR. But it is an undoubted truth, that for ends best known to the Almighty Majesty of heaven, his providential designs for the benefit of his creatures, for the debasing and punishing of some nations, and the exaltation and temporal reward of others, were not wholly known to these his ministers ; else why those factious quarrels, controversies, and battles amongst themselves, when they were all united in the same design, the service and honour of their common master? But being instructed only in the general, and zealous of the main design; and as finite beings, not admitted into the secrets of government, the last resorts of providence, or capable of discovering the final purposes

See vol. i. p. 404, n. 2.

8

of GOD, who can work good out of evil, as he pleases, and irresistibly sways all manner of events on earth, directing them finally for the best, to his creation in general, and to the ultimate end of his own glory in particular; they must of necessity be sometimes ignorant of the means conducing to those ends, in which alone they can jar, and oppose each other one angel, as we may suppose the Prince of Persia, as he is called, judging, that it would be more for GOD's honour, and the benefit of his people, that the Median and Persian monarchy, which delivered them from the Babylonish captivity, should still be uppermost ; and the patron of the Grecians, to whom the will of GOD might be more particularly revealed, contending on the other side, for the rise of Alexander and his successors, who were appointed to punish the backsliding Jews, and thereby to put them in mind of their offences, that they might repent, and become more virtuous, and more observant of the law revealed. But how far these controversies and appearing enmities of those glorious creatures may be carried; how these oppositions may be best managed, and by what means conducted, is not my business to shew or determine: these things must be left to the invention and judgment of the poet: if any of so happy a genius be now living, or any future age can produce a man, who being conversant in the philosophy of Plato, as it is now accommodated to Christian use, (for, as Virgil gives us to understand by his example, that is the only

proper, of all others,' for an epick poem,) who to his natural endowments, of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong memory, has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences, and particularly moral philosophy, the mathematicks, geography, and history; and with all these qualifications is born a poet; knows, and can practice the variety of numbers, and is master of the language in which he writes ;—if such a man, I say, be now arisen, or shall arise, I am vain enough to think, that I have proposed a model to him, by which he may build a nobler, a more beautiful, and more perfect poem, than any yet extant since the ancients.

There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but by what I have said, it would have been easily supplied by a judicious writer. He could not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the good; they have also their design, ever opposite to that of heaven; and this alone has hitherto been the practice of the moderns: but this imperfect system, if I may call it such, which I have given, will infinitely advance and carry farther that hypothesis of the evil spirits contending with the good. For being so much weaker since their fall, than those blessed beings, they are yet supposed to have a permitted power from GOD, of acting ill, as from their own depraved nature they have always the will of designing it. A

See vol. ii. p. 336, n. 6.

great testimony of which we find in holy writ, when God Almighty suffered Satan to appear in the holy synod of the angels, (a thing not hitherto drawn into example by any of the poets,) and also gave him power over all things belonging to his servant, Job, excepting only life.

Now what these wicked Spirits cannot compass, by the vast disproportion of their forces to those of the superior beings, they may by their fraud and cunning carry farther, in a seeming league, confederacy, or subserviency to the designs of some good angel, as far as consists with his purity to suffer such an aid, the end of which may possibly be disguised, and concealed from his finite knowledge. This is indeed to suppose a great errour in such a being; yet since a devil can appear like an angel of light, since craft and malice may sometimes blind for a while a more perfect understanding; and lastly, since Milton has given us an example of the like nature, when Satan appearing like a cherub to Uriel, the intelligence of the sun, circumvented him even in his own province, and passed only for a curious traveller through those new-created regions, that he might observe therein the workmanship of GOD, and praise him in his works, I know not why, upon the same supposition, or some other, a fiend may not deceive a creature of more excellency than himself, but yet a creature; at least by the connivance or tacit permission of the Omniscient Being.

Thus, my lord, I have as briefly as I could, given

your lordship, and by you the world, a rude draught of what I have been long labouring in my imagination; and what I had intended to have put in practice, (though far unable for the attempt of such a poem,) and to have left the stage, to which my genius never much inclined me, for a work which would have taken up my life in the performance of it. This too I had intended chiefly for the honour of my native country, to which a poet is particularly obliged. Of two subjects, both relating to it, I was doubtful, whether I should choose that of King Arthur conquering the Saxons, which, being farther distant in time, gives the greater scope to my invention; or that of Edward the Black Prince, in subduing Spain, and restoring it to the lawful prince, though a great tyrant, Don Pedro the Cruel: which, for the compass of time, including only the expedition of one year, for the greatness of the action, and its answerable event, for the magnanimity of the English hero, opposed to the ingratitude of the person whom he restored, and for the many beautiful episodes, which I had interwoven with the principal design, together with the characters of the chiefest English persons; (wherein, after Virgil and Spencer, I would have taken occasion to represent my living friends and patrons of the noblest families, and also shadowed the events of future ages, in the succession of our imperial line,)-with these helps,' and those of

' In the construction of this sentence, our author has suffered it to run into such an immeasurable length, that