6.
Tragedia mimeis praxeos spadaias, &c.
Tragedia est imitatio actionis seriae.

&c.

Per misericordiam & metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem.
-- ---------------------------------------------------------- -- ---------------------------------------------------------- LONDON.
Printed by J.M.for John Starkey at the Mitre in Fleetstreet, near Temple-Bar.
MDCLXXI SAMSON AGONISTES Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.
TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr'd up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated.

Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.

Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and illustrate thir discourse.