 contained in every Book;
and which we have determined to be essentially necessary to this kind of
Writing, of which we have set ourselves at the Head.
    For this our Determination we do not hold ourselves strictly bound to assign
any Reason; it being abundantly sufficient that we have laid it down as a Rule
necessary to be observed in all Prosai-comi-epic Writing. Who ever demanded the
Reasons of that nice Unity of Time or Place which is now established to be so
essential to dramatick Poetry? What Critick hath been ever asked why a Play may
not contain two Days as well as one, or why the Audience (provided they travel
like Electors, without any Expence) may not be wafted Fifty Miles as well as
five! Hath any Commentator well accounted for the Limitation which an ancient
Critic hath set to the Drama, which he will have contain neither more nor less
than five Acts; or hath any one living attempted to explain, what the modern
Judges of our Theatres mean by that Word low; by which they have happily
succeeded in banishing all Humour from the Stage, and have made the Theatre as
dull as a Drawing-Room? Upon all these Occasions, the World seems to have
embraced a Maxim of our Law, viz. Cuicunque in Arte sua perito credendum est:
For it seems, perhaps, difficult to conceive that any one should have had enough
of Impudence, to lay down dogmatical Rules in any Art or Science without the
least Foundation. In such Cases, therefore, we are apt to conclude there are
sound and good Reasons at the Bottom, tho' we are unfortunately not able to see
so far.
    Now, in Reality, the World have paid too great a Compliment to Critics, and
have imagined them Men of much greater Profundity than they really are. From
this Complaisance, the Critics have been emboldened to assume a Dictatorial
Power, and have so far succeeded that they are now become the Masters, and have
the Assurance to give Laws to those Authors, from whose Predecessors they
originally received them.
    The Critic, rightly considered, is no more than the Clerk, whose Office it
is to transcribe the Rules and Laws laid down by those great Judges, whose vast
Strength of Genius hath placed them in the Light of Legislators in the several
Sciences over which they presided. This Office was all which the Critics of old
aspired to, nor did they ever dare to advance a Sentence, without supporting it
by the Authority of the Judge from whence it was borrowed.
    But in Process of Time, and in Ages of Ignorance, the Clerk began to invade
the
