* THE VERSE. THE Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime 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 Meeter; grac'd indeed fince by the use of Some famous modern Poets, carriea 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 expreft 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 fince our best English Tragedies, us a thing of it felf, 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 found 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 esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing. Paradife Loft. BOOK I. The ARGUMENT. This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject. Man's Difobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac'd: Then touches the prime Cause of his Fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; 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 hasts into the midst of Things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ'd here, not in the Center, (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurs'd) but in a B |