Poetry: Pleasure vs Profit
Some would blame me for insisting and examining only what is apt to please, without a word of what might profit,
1. I believe the end of all Poetry is to please.
2. Some sorts of Poetry please without profiting.
3. I am confident whoever writes a Tragedy cannot please but must also profit; 'tis the Physick of the mind that he makes palatable.
And besides the purging of the passions something must stick by observing that constant order, that harmony and beauty of Providence, that necessary relation and chain whereby the causes and effects, the vertues and rewards, the vices and their punishments are proportion'd and link'd together; how deep and dark soever are laid the Springs, and however intricate and involved are their operations.
1. I believe the end of all Poetry is to please.
2. Some sorts of Poetry please without profiting.
3. I am confident whoever writes a Tragedy cannot please but must also profit; 'tis the Physick of the mind that he makes palatable.
And besides the purging of the passions something must stick by observing that constant order, that harmony and beauty of Providence, that necessary relation and chain whereby the causes and effects, the vertues and rewards, the vices and their punishments are proportion'd and link'd together; how deep and dark soever are laid the Springs, and however intricate and involved are their operations.
Thomas Rymer, from The Tragedies of the Last Age (1667)
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