John Denham, "do not hang George Withers--that it may not
be said I am the worst poet alive."

[322] It would form a very curious piece of comparative criticism,
were the opinions and the arguments of all the critics--those
of the time and of the present day--thrown into the
smelting-pot. The massiness of some opinions of great
authority would be reduced to a thread of wire; and even what
is accepted as standard ore might shrink into "a gilt
sixpence." On one side, the condemners of D'Avenant would be
Rymer, Blackwall, Granger, Knox, Hurd, and Hayley; and the
advocates would be Hobbes, Waller, Cowley, Dr. Aikin, Headley,
&c. Rymer opened his Aristotelian text-book. He discovers that
the poet's first lines do not give any light into his design
(it is probable D'Avenant would have found it hard to have
told it to Mr. Rymer); that it has neither proposition nor
invocation--(Rymer might have filled these up himself); so
that "he chooses to enter into the top of the house, because
the mortals of mean and satisfied minds go in at the door;"
and then "he has no hero or action so illustrious that the
_name_ of the poem prepared the reader for its reception."
D'Avenant had rejected the marvellous from his poem--that is,
the machinery of the epic: he had resolved to compose a tale
of human beings for men. "This was," says Blackwall, another
of the classical flock, "like lopping off a man's limb, and
then putting him upon running races." Our formal critics are
quite lively in their dulness on our "adventurer." But poets,
in the crisis of a poetical revolution, are more legitimate
judges than all such critics. Waller and Cowley applaud
D'Avenant for this very omission of the epical machinery in
this new vein of invention:--

"Here no bold tales of gods or monsters swell,
But human passions such as with us dwell;
_Man is thy theme_, his virtue or his rage,
Drawn to the life in each elaborate page."
WALLER.

"Methinks heroic poesy, till now,
Like some fantastic fairy-land did show,
_And all but man, in man's best work had place_."