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 Verfe, 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 fome 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 fume, both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as have alfo long fince our beft English Tragedies, us a thing of it felf, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which confifts only in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, 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 An- . cients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rime fo 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 fet, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublefom and modern bondage of Rimeing. Para [r] Paradife Loft. BOOK I. The ARGUMENT. This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole Subject. Man's Difobedi ence, and the lofs thereupon of Paradife wherein he was plac'd: Then touches the prime Caufe 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 pafs'd over, the Poem hafts into the midft of Things, prefenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, defcrib'd here, not in the Center, (for Heaven and Earth may be fuppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurs'd) but in i B |