Yet as I read; ftill growing lefs fevere, I lik'd his project, the success did fear ; Through that wide field how he his way should find, O'er which lame faith leads understanding blind; Left he perplex'd the things he would explain, And what was eafy he thould render vain. Or if a work fo infinite he spann'd, Might hence prefume the whole creation's day Thou haft not mifs'd one thought that could be fit, So that no room is here for writers left,. That majefty which through thy work doth reign, Where Where couldst thou words of fuch a compass find? Whence furnish such a vaft expence of mind? Juft Heaven thee, like Tirefias, to requite Rewards with prophecy thy lofs of fight. Well might'ft thou fcorn thy readers to allure And while I meant to praise thee must commend. 1 To Mr. JOHN MILTON, On his Poem entitled PARADISE LOST Thou! the wonder of the present age, An age immerst in luxury and vice; A race of triflers; who can relish naught But the gay iffue of an idle brain : How couldst thou hope to please this tinsel race? "And justify the ways of God to Man.". HE measure is English heroic verse without TH rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter; 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 exprefs 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 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 fense variously drawn out from one verfe 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 |