Yet as I read, ftill growing less severe,
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 should render vain.
Or if a work fo infinite he spann'd,
Jealous I was that fome less skilful 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 scenes, and show it in a play.
Pardon me, mighty Poet; nor despise
My causeless, 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 majefty which through thy work doth reign,
Draws the devout, deterring the profane.
And things divine thou treat'st of in fuch state
As them preferves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horror on us seize,
Thou fing'ft with fo much gravity and ease;
And above human flight dost foar aloft
With plume so strong, fo equal, and fo foft.
The bird nam'd from that Paradise you fing
So never flags, but always keeps on wing.

Where couldst thou words of fuch a compass find? Whence furnish fuch a vast expence of mind? Juft Heaven thee, like Tirefias, to requite Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.

Well might'ft thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure; While the town-bays writes all the while and spells, 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, transported by the mode, offend, And while I meant to praife thee must commend. Thy verfe created like thy theme fublime, Number, weight, and meafure, needs not rhyme.

ANDREW MARVELL

To Mr. JOHN MILTON,

On his Poem entitled PARADISE LOST.

Thou! the wonder of the prefent age,

An age immerft in luxury and vice;
A race of triflers; who can relish naught
But the gay iffue of an idle brain:

How couldft thou hope to please this tinsel race?
Though blind, yet with the penetrating eye
Of intellectual light thou dost survey

The labyrinth perplex'd of Heaven's decrees;
And with a quill, pluck'd from an angel's wing,
Dipt in the fount that laves th' eternal throne,
Trace the dark paths of providence divine,
"And justify the ways of God to Man."

3

F. C. 1680.

THE

TH

THE VERSE.

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 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 fome famous modern poets, carried away by cuftom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to exprefs many things otherwife, and for the moft part worse than elfe 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 fhorter 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 sense 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

of rhyme fo little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that i rather is to be efteemed an example fet, the firf in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroi poem, from the troublesome and modern bondag of rhyming.

ΤΙ

THE

FIRST BOOK

O F

PARADISE LOST.