oicism, the principles whereof will not admit any vice to
come near where virtue is, nor virtue to have anything to do where any
vice lodgeth, but affirms that he that is not a wise man can do nothing
well, and he that is so can do nothing amiss. Thus they determine in
the schools. But in human actions and the affairs of common life the
judgment of Euripides is verified, that

Virtue and vice ne'er separately exist,
But in the same acts with each other twist.
(From the "Aeolus" of Euripides.)

Next, it is to be observed that poetry, waiving the truth of things,
does most labor to beautify its fictions with variety and multiplicity
of contrivance. For variety bestows upon fable all that is pathetical,
unusual, and surprising, and thereby makes it more taking and graceful;
whereas what is void of variety is unsuitable to the nature of fable,
and so raiseth no passions at all. Upon which design of variety it is,
that the poets never represent the same persons always victorious or
prosperous or acting with the same constant tenor of virtue;--yea,
even the gods themselves, when they engage in human actions, are not
represented as free from passions and errors;--lest, for the want of
some difficulties and cross passages, their poems should be destitute
of that briskness which is requisite to move and astonish the minds of
men.

These things therefore so standing, we should, when we enter a young man
into the study of the poets, endeavor to free his mind from that degree
of esteem of the good and great personages in them described as may
incline him to think them to be mirrors of wisdom and justice, the chief
of princes, and the exemplary measures of all virtue and goodness. For
he will receive much prejudice, if he shall approve and admire all that
comes from such persons as great, if he dislike nothing in them himself,
nor will endure to hear others blame them, though for such words and
actions as the following passages import:--

Oh! would to all the immortal powers above,
Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!
That not one Trojan might be left alive,
And not a Greek of all the race survive.
Might only we the vast destruction shun,
And only we destroy the accursed town!

Her breast all gore, with lamentable cries,
The bleeding innocent Cassandra dies,
Murdered by Clytemnestra's faithless hand:

Lie with thy father's whore, my mother said,
That she t