Where couldst thou words of fuch a compass find? Whence furnish fuch a vast expence of mind? Just Heaven thee, like Tirefias, to requite Rewards with prophecy thy loss of fight. Well might'ft thou fcorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure; While the town-bays writes all the while and spells, And like a pack-horse tires without his bells: Their fancies like our bushy-points appear, The poets tag them, we for fashion wear. I too, transported by the mode, offend, And while I meant to praise thee must commend, Thy verse created like thy theme fublime, Number, weight, and meafure, needs not rhyme. ANDREW MARVELL. To Mr. JOHN MILTO N, On his Poem entitled P A RADISE Thou the wonder of the prefent age, An age immerst in luxury and vice; A race of triflers; who can relish naught But the gay iffue of an idle brain : LOST. How couldst thou hope to please this tinfel race? F. C. 1680. THE [ ] T THE VERSE. HE measure is English heroic verfe without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no neceffary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verfe, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbàrous age, to fet off wretched matter and lame meter; graced indeed fince by the ufe of fome famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwife, and for the most part worse than else they would have expreffed them. Not without caufe therefore fome both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and fhorter works, as have also long fince our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true mufical delight; which confifts only in apt numbers, fit quantity of fyllables, and the fense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling found of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then VOL. I. B of of rhyme fo little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be efteemed an example fet, the firft in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming. THE ་ This firft Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, Man's difobedience, and the lofs thereupon of Paradife wherein he was plac'd: Then touches the prime caufe of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the ferpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his fide many legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Which action pass'd over, the poem haftes into the midst of things, prefenting Satan with his Angels now falling into Hell, defcrib'd here, not in the center (for Heaven and Earth may be fuppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurs'd) but in a place of utter darkness, fitlieft call'd Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunder-ftruck and aftonish'd, after a certain space recovers, as from confufion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miferable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the fame manner confounded: They rife, their numbers, array of battel, their chief leaders nam'd, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his fpeech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before this vifible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determin thereon, he refers to a full council. What his affociates thence attempt. Pandemonium the palace of Satan rifes, fuddenly built out of the deep: The infernal peers there fit in council. |