I have endeavour'd to give the Passages as naked and stript of Superfluities and foreign Matter, as possibly I could: but often found my self oblig'd for the sake of the Connexion of the Sense, which else would have been interrupted, and consequently obscure, to insert some of them under Heads, to which every Part or Line of them may be thought not properly to belong: Nay, I sometimes even found it difficult to chuse under what Head to place several of the best Thoughts; but the Reader may be assur'd, that if he find them not where he expects, he will not wholly lose his Labour; for
The Search it self rewards his Pains;
And if like Chymists his great End he miss,
Yet things well worth his Toil he gains;
And does his Charge and Labour pay
With good unsought Experiments by the way.Cowley.
That the Reader may judge of every Passage with due Deference for each Author, he will find their Names at the End of the last Line; and as the late Versions of the Greek and Roman Poets have not a little contributed to this Collection, Homer, Anacreon, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, &c. are cited with their Translators: And after each Author's Name are quoted their Plays and other Poems, from whence the Passages are extracted.
The Reader will likewise observe, that I have sometimes ascrib'd to several Authors the Quotations taken from one and the same Play. Thus to those from the first and third Act of Oedipus, I have put Dryden; to those from the three other, Lee: Because the first and third Act of that Play were written by Dryden, the three other by Lee. To those from Troilus and Cressida I have sometimes put Shakespear, sometimes Dryden; because he having alter'd that Play, whatever I found not in the Edition of Shakespear, ought to be ascrib'd to him. And in like manner of several other Plays.
As no Thought can be justly said to be fine, unless it be true, I have all along had a great regard for Truth; except only in Passages that are purely Satirical, where some Allowance must be given: For Satire may be fine and true Satire, tho' it be not directly and according to the Letter, true: 'tis enough that it carry with it a Probability or Semblance of Truth. Let it not here be objected, that I have from the Translators of the Greek and Roman Poets, taken some Descriptions meerly fabulous: for the well-invented Fables of the Antients were design'd only to inculcate the Truth with more Delight, and to make it shine with greater Splendour.
Rien n'est beau que le Vrai. Le Vrai seul est Aimable:
Il doit regner par tout; & meme dans la Fable:
De toute Fiction l'adroite Fausseté
Ne tend qu' à faire aux yeux briller la Verité.Boileau.
I have upon every Subject given both Pro and Con whenever I met with them, or that I judg'd them worth giving: and if both are not always found, let none imagine that I wilfully suppress'd either; or that what is here uncontradicted must be unanswerable.
If any take Offence at the Loosness of some of the Thoughts, as particularly upon Love, where I have given the different Sentiments which Mankind, according to their several Temperaments, ever had, and ever will have of it; such may observe, that I have strictly avoided all manner of Obscenity throughout the whole Collection: And tho' here and there a Thought may perhaps have a Cast of Wantonness, yet the cleanly Metaphors palliate the Broadness of the Meaning, and the Chastness of the Words qualifies the Lasciviousness of the Images they represent. And let them farther know, that I have not always chosen what I most approv'd, but what carries with it the best Stroaks for Imitation: For, upon the whole matter, it was not my Business to judge any farther, than of the Vigour and Force of Thought, of the Purity of Language, of the Aptness and Propriety of Expression; and above all, of the Beauty of Colouring, in which the Poet's Art chiefly consists. Nor, in short, would I take upon me to determine what things should have been said; but have shewn only what are said, and in what manner.