The Quantus in ætheriis tollit se Lucifer armis, Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit! Excidit attonitis mens omnis, et impetus omnis, S. B., M.D. (S. BARROW) ON PARADISE LOST WHEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) He treats of a high theme (So Samson groped the temple's posts in spite), worthily I liked his project, the success did fear— find should O'er which lame Faith leads Understanding Lest he perplexed the things he would explain, Might hence presume the whole Creation's day And all that was improper dost omit ; So that no room is here for writers left, The majesty which through thy work doth Draws the devout, deterring the profane. The new And above human flight dost soar aloft So never flags, but always keeps on wing. Where could'st thou words of such a compass Whence furnish such a vast expense of mind? Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to allure And, like a pack-horse, tires without his bells. A. M. (ANDREW MARVELL) THE VERSE THE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that Rime of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin-rime being does but no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good shackle verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a the poet barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings-a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime so 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 set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming. |