What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of wit and learning in
the story of Deucalion than in that of Noah? Why will not the actions of
Samson afford as plentiful matter as the labours of Hercules? Why is not
Jephthah's daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia? and the friendship of
David and Jonathan more worthy celebration than that of Theseus and
Pirithous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the
Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of
Ulysses or Aeneas? Are the obsolete, threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy
half so stored with great, heroical, and supernatural actions (since
verse will needs find or make such) as the wars of Joshua, of the
Judges, of David, and divers others?... All the books of the Bible are
either already most admirable and exalted pieces of poesy, or are the
best material in the world for it.--A. COWLEY. _Preface to Davideis._