Will the whole fortune of your work decide.
Would you your reader never should be tired,
Chuse some great hero, fit to be admired,
Chuse some great hero, fit to be admired,
In courage signal, and in virtue bright;
Let even his very failings give delight;
Let his great actions our attention bind,
Like Cæsar, or like Scipio, frame his mind,
And not like Œdipus his perjured race;
A common conqueror is a theme too base.