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SAMSON AGONISTES
Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.
TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the gravest,
moralest, and most 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 such like passions, that is to temper and reduce
them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr'd up by reading or
seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own
effects to make good his assertion: for so in Physic things of
melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sowr against
sowr, salt to remove salt humours. Hence Philosophers and other gravest
Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of Tragic
Poets, both to adorn and illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul
himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the
Text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. 15. 33. and Paraeus commenting on the
Revelation, divides the whole Book as a Tragedy, into Acts distinguisht
each by a Chorus of Heavenly Harpings and Song between. Heretofore Men
in highest dignity have labour'd not a little to be thought able to
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