I

An ACCOUNT of the enfuing POEM,

In a LETTER to the

Hon. Sir ROBERT HOWARD.

SIR,

AM fo many ways obliged to you, and fo little able to return your favours, that, like those who owe too much, I can only live by getting farther into your debt. You have not only been careful of my fortune, which was the effect of your nobleness, but you have been folicitous of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. It is not long fince I gave you the trouble of perufing a play for me, and now, instead of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater, in the correction of a poem. But fince you are to bear this perfecution, I will at least give you the encourage-ment of a martyr; you could never suffer in a nobler caufe. For I have chofen the most heroic fubject, which any poet could defire: I have taken upon me to defcribe the motives, the beginning, progrefs, and fucceffes, of a moft juft and necessary war; in it, the care, management, and prudence of our king; the conduct and valour of a royal admiral, and of two incompara, ble generals; the invincible courage of our captains and feamen; and three glorious victories, the refult of all. After this, I have, in the Fire, the moft deplorable, but withal the greatest, argument that can be imagined;

VOL. I.

E

gined the deftruction being fo fwift, fo fudden, fo vaft and miferable, as nothing can parallel in ftory. The former part of this poem, relating to the war, is but a due expiation for my not having ferved my king and country in it. All gentlemen are almost obliged to it and I know no reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to be foremost in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never suffer in their peasants. I fhould not have written this but to a perfon who has been ever forward to appear in all employments whither his honour and generofity have called him. The latter part of my poem, which defcribes the Fire, I owe, first to the piety and fatherly affection of our monarch to his fuffering fubjects; and, in the second place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city; both which were fo confpicuous, that I wanted words to celebrate them as they deferve. I have called my poem Hiftorical, not Epic, though both the actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But fince the action is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the last fucceffes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few ftanzas, which are little more in number than a fingle Iliad, or the longeft of the Æneids. For this reafon (I mean not of length, but broken action, tied too feverely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree with those, who rank Lucan, rather among historians in verfe, than Epic poets: in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worfe writer, may more juftly be admitted. I have chofen to write my poem

poem in quatrains, or ftanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and of greater dignity, both for the found and number, than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am sure I have your approbation. The learned languages havę certainly a great advantage of us, in not being tied to the flavery of any rhyme; and were lefs conftrained in the quantity of every fyllable, which they might vary with fpondees or dactyls, befides fo many other helps of grammatical figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the modern are in the clofe of that one fyllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts, the fenfe of all the reft. But in this neceffity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verfe moft easy, though not so proper for this occafion : for there the work is fooner at an end, every two lines concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it farther on, and not only fo, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For thofe, who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowledge, that the laft line of the ftanza is to be confidered in the composition of the firft. Neither can we give ourselves the liberty of making any part of a verse for the fake of rhyme, or concluding with a word which is not current English, or ufing the variety of female rhymes; all which our fathers practifed and for the female rhymes, they are ftill in ufe amongst other nations; with the Italian in every line, with the Spaniard promifcuously, with the French alternately; as thofe who have read the Alarique, the

Pucelle, or any of their later poems, will agree with me. And befides this, they write in Alexandrins, or verses of fix feet; fuch as amongst us is the old translation of Homer by Chapman: all which, by lengthning of their chain, makes the sphere of their activity the larger. I have dwelt too long upon the choice of my stanza, which you may remember is much better defended in the preface to Gondibert; and therefore I will haften to acquaint you with my endeavours in the writing. In general I will only fay, I have never yet seen the description of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at fea and if there be any fuch in another language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharfalia, yet I could not avail myself of it in the English; the terms of art in every tongue bearing more of the idiom of it than any other words. We hear indeed among our poets, of the thundering of guns, the smoke, the diforder, and the flaughter; but all these are common notions. And certainly, as those who in a logical dispute keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy; fo those who do it in any poetical defcription, would veil their ignorance.

"Defcriptas fervare vices operumque colores, "Cur ego, fi nequeo ignoroque, Poeta falutor?" For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the fea, yet I have thought it no fhame to learn: and if I have made fome few mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity to correct them; the whole poem being firft written, and now

fent you from a place where I have not fo much as the converse of any feaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was no more than recompensed by the pleasure. I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two fuch especially as the prince and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I am well fatisfied, that, as they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the royal family, fo alfo, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me: they have been low and barren of praife, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here-" Omnia fponte fua "reddit juftiffima tellus." I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; fo fertile, that without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a fummer, and in both oppreffed the reaper. All other greatness in fubjects is only counterfeit : it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real other greatness burdens a nation with its weight; this fupports it with its ftrength. And as it is the happiness of the age, so it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praise his fubjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a just confidence of his own virtue, which the luftre of no other can be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never fafely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digreffion to a farther account of

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