SAMSON AGONISTES,

A

DRAMATIC POE M.

THE AUTHOR

JOHN MILTON.

Ariftot. Poet. Cap. 6.

Tragadia mimefis praxeos Spondaias, &c.

Tragoedia eft imitatio actionis feriæ, &c. per mifericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum luftrati

onem.

M 2

Of that fort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.

TR

RAGEDY, as it was anciently compos'd, hath been ever held the graveft, moraleft, and moft profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and fuch like paffions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, ftirr'd up by reading or seeing those paffions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his affertion : for so in physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, four against four, falt to remove falt humors. Hence philofophers and other graveft writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illuftrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to infert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33. and Paræus commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book as a tragedy, into acts diftinguish'd each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and fong between. Heretofore men in higheft dignity have labor'd not a little to be thought able to compofe a tragedy. Of that honor Dionyfius the elder was no lefs ambitious, than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Auguftus Cæfar alfo had begun his Ajax, but unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinish'd. Seneca the philofopher is by fome thought the author of those tragedies (at least the

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