SAMSON AGONISTES, A DRAMATIC POEM. THE AUTHOR JOHN MILTON. Τραγωδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας, &c. Aristot. Poet. cap. vi. œdia et imitatio actionis seriæ, &c. per misericordiam ct metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem. OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM W IS CALLED TRAGEDY. TRAGEDY, as it was anciently composed been ever held the gravest, moralest, and profitable of all other poems; therefore sa Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity, and or terror, to purge the mind of those and suc passions, that is, to temper and reduce them measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by ing or seeing those passions well imitated. is nature wanting in her own effects to make his assertion, for so in physic things of n cholic hue and quality are used against n choly, sour against sour, salt to remov humours. Hence philosophers and other g writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequ cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and trate their discourse. The apostle Paul self thought it not unworthy to insert a ve Euripides into the text of holy scripture, 1 xv. 33, and Paræus, commenting on the R tion, divides the whole book, as a tragedy acts, distinguished each by a chorus of hea harpings and song between. Heretofore m highest dignity have laboured not a little thought able to compose a tragedy. Of 3 honour Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Cæsar also had begun his Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies, at least the best of them, that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a father of the church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which is entitled, Christ Suffering. This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient tragedy use no prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an epistle, in behalf of this tragedy coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much beforehand may be epistled: that Chorus is here introduced after the Greek manner, not ancient only but modern, and still in use among the Italians. In the modeling therefore of this poem, with good reason, the ancients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more |