o spare you the
trouble, which I am now giving you, of a postscript, if I were not
obliged, by many reasons, to write somewhat concerning our present
plays, and those of our predecessors on the English stage. The truth
is, I have so far engaged myself in a bold epilogue to this play,
wherein I have somewhat taxed the former writing, that it was
necessary for me either not to print it, or to show that I could
defend it. Yet I would so maintain my opinion of the present age, as
not to be wanting in my veneration for the past: I would ascribe to
dead authors their just praises in those things wherein they have
excelled us; and in those wherein we contend with them for the
pre-eminence, I would acknowledge our advantages to the age, and claim
no victory from our wit. This being what I have proposed to myself, I
hope I shall not be thought arrogant when I enquire into their errors:
For we live in an age so sceptical, that as it determines little, so
it takes nothing from antiquity on trust; and I profess to have no
other ambition in this essay, than that poetry may not go backward,
when all other arts and sciences are advancing. Whoever censures me
for this inquiry, let him hear his character from Horace:

_Ingeniis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis,
Nostra sed impugnat; nos nostraque lividus odit._

He favours not dead wits, but hates the living.

It was upbraided to that excellent poet, that he was an enemy to the
writings of his predecessor Lucilius, because he had said, _Lucilium
lutulentum fluere_, that he ran muddy; and that he ought to have
retrenched from his satires many unnecessary verses. But Horace makes
Lucilius himself to justify him from the imputation of envy, by
telling you that he would have done the same, had he lived in an age
which was more refined:

_Si foret hoc nostrum fato delapsus in aevum,
Detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod, ultra
Perfectum traheretur, &c._

And, both in the whole course of that satire, and in his most
admirable Epistle to Augustus, he makes it his business to prove, that
antiquity alone is no plea for the excellency of a poem; but that, one
age learning from another, the last (if we can suppose an equality of
wit in the writers,) has the advantage of knowing more and better than
the former And this, I think, is the state of the question in dispute.
It is therefore my part to make it clear, that the language, wit, and
conversation of our age, are improve