Or if a work fo infinite he fpann'd,
Jealous I was that fome lefs fkilful hand
(Such as difquiet always what is well,
And by ill imitating would excel)

Might hence prefume the whole creation's day
To change in fcenes, and fhow it in a play.

Pardon me, mighty Poet, nor defpife
My caufelefs, yet not impious, furmife.
But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare
Within thy labours to pretend a share.
Thou haft not mifs'd one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper doft omit :
So that no room is here for writers left,
But to detect their ignorance or theft.

That majesty which through thy work doth reign, Draws the devout, deterring the profane. And things divine thou treat'ft of in such state As them preferves, and thee, inviolate. At once delight and horror on us seise, Thou fing'st with so much gravity and ease And above human flight dost foar aloft With plume fo ftrong, so equal, and se soft. The bird nam'd from that Paradise you fing So never flags, but always keeps on wing

Where couldst thou words of such a compass find} Whence furnish such a vast expanse of mind? Juft Heav'n thee like Tirefias to requite, Rewards with prophecy thy loss of fight,

Well might'ft thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme of thy own fense secure;

While

While the Town-Bays writes all the while and fpells,
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 tranfported by the mode offend,

And while I mean to Praise thee must Commend.

Thy verse created like thy theme fublime,

In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme.

THE

VERSE.

THER

'HE measure is English heroic verse 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 efpecially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to fet off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed fince by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by cuftom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwife, and for the most part worse than elfe they would have exprefled them. Not without cause therefore fome, both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note, have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter 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 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 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 esteemed an example fet, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.

1

PARA