; for when the
world was younger, it might perhaps love and fight, and do generous
things at the rate he describes them; but since it is grown old, all
these heroic feats are laid by and utterly given over, nor ever like to
come in fashion again; and therefore all his images of those virtues
signify no more than the statues upon dead men's tombs, that will never
make them live again. He is like one of Homer's gods, that sets men
together by the ears and fetches them off again how he pleases; brings
armies into the field like Janello's leaden soldiers; leads up both
sides himself, and gives the victory to which he pleases, according as
he finds it fit the design of his story; makes love and lovers too,
brings them acquainted, and appoints meetings when and where he pleases,
and at the same time betrays them in the height of all their felicity to
miserable captivity, or some other horrid calamity; for which he makes
them rail at the gods and curse their own innocent stars when he only
has done them all the injury; makes men villains, compels them to act
all barbarous inhumanities by his own directions, and after inflicts the
cruellest punishments upon them for it. He makes all his knights fight
in fortifications, and storm one another's armour before they can come
to encounter body for body, and always matches them so equally one with
another that it is a whole page before they can guess which is likely to
have the better; and he that has it is so mangled that it had been
better for them both to have parted fair at first; but when they
encounter with those that are no knights, though ever so well armed and
mounted, ten to one goes for nothing. As for the ladies, they are every
one the most beautiful in the whole world, and that's the reason why no
one of them, nor all together with all their charms, have power to tempt
away any knight from another. He differs from a just historian as a
joiner does from a carpenter; the one does things plainly and
substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show
and ornament.

A LIBELLER

Is a certain classic author that handles his subject-matter very
ruggedly, and endeavours with his own evil words to corrupt another
man's good manners. All his works treat but of two things, his own
malice and another man's faults, both which he describes in very proper
and pertinent language. He is not much concerned whether what he writes
be true or false; that's nothing t