A

POE E M,

IN

TWELVE BOOK S.

The AUTHOR

JOHN MILTON.

VOL. I.

EDINBURGH:

Printed for A. KINCAID and W. CREECH,
and J. BALFOUR.

M, DCC, LXXIII.

BIBLIOTHECA.

RECLA

MONACENSIS

T

HE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rime being no neceffary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verfe, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to fet off wretched matter and lame meter; grac'd indeed fince by the ufe of fome famous modern poets, carried away by cuítom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to exprefs many things otherwife, and for the most part worse than clfe they would have exprefs'd them. Not without cause therefore fome both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime 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 fenfe varioufly drawn out from one verfe into another, not in the jingling found of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Aneients both in poetry and all good oratory.

[vi]

This neglect then of rime fo little is to be taken for a defect, though it may feem fo perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example fet, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming.