Hugo Grotius His Sophompaneas, or Ioseph :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Translators Prologue.

Here no Medea her own Children kils,
Nor Hercules the Stage with horror fils:
The Poet your delight and profit seeks,
(Not borrowing a Fable from the Greeks;)
But from the sacred Oracles of Truth,
Where chaster then Hippolitus a Youth
High Providence did out of Prison bring,
To save and rule a Nation and a King.
And after twenty yeers, who dead was thought,
Is by his Sire and Brethren found unsought.
If yet the Interpreter or Argument,
Shall not to Criticks give a full content:
Who look for sadder straines, and that we tread,
More loftily in tragick buskins, read
His Christus Patiens made yours by Sands,
Which to admire and love the World commands.
But above all two Champions appear,
The noble Falkland there, and Vossius here.

This neither the Latin, nor Greek Tragick Writers use: But why may not they, as well as the Comick, commend the person of the Poet? or to win benevolence, and attention, expound the argument? Vossi. Instit. poeti. l. 2.6.26.

Nor want I the example of Buchanan in his Iephthes, & Baptistes.