o knows he has neither genius nor judgment,
he has recourse to the making a party, and he endeavours to make up in
industry what is wanting in talent, and to supply by poetical craft
the absence of poetical art: that such an author is humbly contented to
raise men's passions by a plot without doors, since he despairs of doing
it by that which he brings upon the stage. That party and passion, and
prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the
more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that
they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want
judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it, and, like a fierce and
outrageous torrent, bear down all opposition before them."

He then condemns the neglect of poetical justice, which is one of his
favourite principles:--

"'Tis certainly the duty of every tragic poet, by the exact distribution
of poetical justice, to imitate the Divine Dispensation, and to
inculcate a particular Providence. 'Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of
the world, the wicked sometimes prosper and the guiltless suffer;
but that is permitted by the Governor of the World, to show, from the
attribute of His infinite justice, that there is a compensation in
futurity, to prove the immortality of the human soul, and the certainty
of future rewards and punishments. But the poetical persons in tragedy
exist no longer than the reading or the representation; the whole extent
of their enmity is circumscribed by those; and therefore, during that
reading or representation, according to their merits or demerits, they
must be punished or rewarded. If this is not done, there is no impartial
distribution of poetical justice, no instructive lecture of a particular
Providence, and no imitation of the Divine Dispensation. And yet the
author of this tragedy does not only run counter to this, in the fate
of his principal character; but everywhere, throughout it, makes virtue
suffer, and vice triumph: for not only Cato is vanquished by Caesar,
but the treachery and perfidiousness of Syphax prevail over the
honest simplicity and the credulity of Juba; and the sly subtlety
and dissimulation of Portius over the generous frankness and
open-heartedness of Marcus."

Whatever pleasure there may be in seeing crimes punished and virtue
rewarded, yet, since wickedness often prospers in real life, the poet is
certainly at liberty to give it prosperity on the stage. For if poetry