“Besides, you must be strictly diligent, that your expressions appear of a piece with the body of the discourse, and your colours so laid, that each may contribute to the beauty of the whole.  Greece has given us a Homer and the Lyricks for example; Rome a Virgil and an Horace; the purity of whose language is so happily correct, others either never saw the path that leads to poetry, or seeing, were afraid to tread it.  To describe the civil wars of Rome would be a master-piece, the unletter’d head that offers at it, will sink beneath the weight of so great a work; for to relate past actions, is not so much the business of a poet, as an historian; the boundless genius of a poet strikes through all mazes, introduces gods, and puts the invention on the rack for poetick ornaments; that it may rather seem a prophetick fury, than a strict relation, with witnesses of meer truth.  As for example, this rapture, tho’ I have not given it the last hand.

   “Now Rome reign’d Empress o’re the vanquished ball,
    As far as earth and seas, obey’d by all: 
    Uneasie yet, with more desires she’s curst,
    And boundless, as her empire, is her thirst. 
    In burden’d vessels now they travelled o’re
    The furrow’d deep to seas unknown before: 
    And any hidden part of land or sea,
    That gold afforded, was an enemy. 
    Thus fate the seeds of civil fury rais’d,
    When great in wealth no common pleasure pleas’d. 
    Delights more out of fashion by the town: 
    Th’ souldiers scarlet now from Spain must come;
    The purple of the sea contemn’d is grown. 
    India with silks, Africk with precious stone,
    Arabia with its spices hither come,
    And with their ruin raise the pride of Rome. 
    But other spoils, destructive to her peace,
    Rome’s ruin bode, and future ills encrease: 
    Through Libyan desarts are wild monsters chas’d. 
    And the remotest parts of Africk trac’d: 
    Where the unwieldy elephant that’s ta’en,
    For fatal value of his tooth is slain. 
    Uncommon tygers are imported here,
    And triumphant in the theatre;
    Where, while devouring jaws on men they try,
    The people clap to see their fellows die. 
    But oh! who can without a blush relate
    The horrid scene of their approaching fate? 
    When Persian customs, fashionable grown,
    Made nature start, and her best work disown,
    Male infants are divorc’d from all that can,
    By timely progress ripen into man. 
    Thus circling nature dampt, a while restrain
    Her hasty course, and a pause remains;
    Till working a return t’her wonted post,
    She seeks her self, and to her self is lost. 
    The herd of fops the frantick humour take,
    Each keeps a capon, loves its mincing gate,
    Its flowing hair, and striving all it can,
    In changing mode and dress, t’ appear a man.