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 show 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 epic
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
mathematics, geography, and history), and with all these
qualifications is born a poet, knows, and can practise 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.
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