TO THE METROPOLIS OF GREAT BRITAIN,

THE MOST RENOWNED AND LATE

FLOURISHING CITY OF

LONDON, IN ITS REPRESENTATIVES THE LORD MAYOR AND COURT OF ALDERMEN,

THE SHERIFFS AND COMMON COUNCIL OF IT.

As perhaps I am the first who ever presented a work of this 5 nature to the metropolis of any nation, so is it likewise consonant to justice, that he who was to give the first example of such a dedication should begin it with that City which has set a pattern to all others of true loyalty, invincible courage, and unshaken constancy. Other cities have been praised 10 for the same virtues, but I am much deceived if any have so dearly purchased their reputation: their fame has been won them by cheaper trials than an expensive though necessary war, a consuming pestilence, and a more consuming fire. To submit your selves with that humility to the judgments 15 of Heaven, and at the same time to raise your selves with that vigour above all human enemies; to be combated at once from above and from below; to be struck down and to triumph: I know not whether such trials have been ever paralleled in any nation, the resolution and successes of them 20 never can be. Never had prince or people more mutual reason to love each other, if suffering for each other can endear affection. You have come together a pair of matchless lovers, through many difficulties; he, through a long exile, various traverses of fortune, and the interposition of 25 many rivals, who violently ravished and withheld you from him; and certainly you have had your share in sufferings. But Providence has cast upon you want of trade, that you might appear bountiful to your country's necessities; and the rest of your afflictions are not more the effects of God's 30 displeasure (frequent examples of them having been in the reign of the most excellent princes) than occasions for the

manifesting of your Christian and civil virtues. To you, therefore, this Year of Wonders is justly dedicated, because you have made it so: you, who are to stand a wonder to all years and ages, and who have built your selves an immortal 5 monument on your own ruins. You are now a phoenix in her ashes, and, as far as humanity can approach, a great emblem of the suffering Deity. But Heaven never made so much piety and virtue to leave it miserable. I have heard indeed of some virtuous persons who have ended 10 unfortunately, but never of any virtuous nation. Providence is engaged too deeply, when the cause becomes so general; and I cannot imagine it has resolved the ruin of that people at home, which it has blessed abroad with such successes. I am, therefore, to conclude that your sufferings are at an 15 end, and that one part of my poem has not been more an history of your destruction, than the other a prophecy of your restoration. The accomplishment of which happiness, as it is the wish of all true Englishmen, so is by none more passionately desired than by

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The greatest of your admirers

and most humble of your servants,

JOHN DRYDEN.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE ENSUING POEM,

IN A LETTER TO THE HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT HOWARD.

SIR,

I am so many ways obliged to you and so little able to return your favours that, like those who owe too much, 5 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 solicitous of my reputation, which is that of your kindness. It is not long since I gave you the trouble of perusing a play for me; 10 and now, instead of an acknowledgment, I have given you a greater in the correction of a poem. But since you are to bear this persecution, I will at least give you the encouragement of a martyr; you could never suffer in a nobler cause. For I have chosen the most heroic subject which 15 any poet could desire: I have taken upon me to describe the motives, the beginning, progress, and successes of a most just and necessary war; in it the care, management, and prudence of our King; the conduct and valour of a royal Admiral and of two incomparable Generals; the invincible 20 courage of our captains and seamen, and three glorious victories, the result of all. After this, I have in the fire the most deplorable, but withal the greatest argument that can be imagined; the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as nothing can parallel in story. The 25 former part of this poem, relating to the war, is but a due expiation for my not serving 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 30 noblesse of France would never suffer in their peasants. I should not have written this but to a person who has been ever forward to appear in all employments, whither his honour

and generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem, which describes the fire, I owe, first, to the piety and fatherly affection of our Monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second place, to the courage, loyalty, and magnanimity 5 of the City; both which were so conspicuous that I have wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve. I have called my poem historical, not epic, though both the actions and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But since the action is not properly one, nor that accom10 plished in the last successes, I have judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas, which are little more in number than a single Iliad or the longest of the Æneids. For this reason (I mean not of length, but broken action, tied too severely to the laws of history) I am apt to agree with those who 15 rank Lucan rather among historians in verse than epic poets; in whose room, if I am not deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worse writer, may more justly be admitted. I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble and of 20 greater dignity both for the sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us; in which I am sure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a great advantage of us in not being tied to the slavery of any rhyme, and were less constrained in the quantity of 25 every syllable, which they might vary with spondees or dactyls, besides so many other helps of grammatical figures for the lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the modern are in the close of that one syllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the rest. But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse most easy (though not so proper for this occasion), for there the work is sooner 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 so, but to bear along in his 35 head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For those who write correctly in this kind must needs acknowledge that the last line of the stanza is to be considered in the composition of the first. Neither can we give ourselves

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the liberty of making any part of a verse for the sake of
rhyme, or concluding with a word which is not current
English, or using the variety of female rhymes; all which
our fathers practised. And for the female rhymes, they are
still in use amongst other nations: with the Italian in every 5
line, with the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French al-
ternately, as those who have read the Alaric, the Pucelle, or
any of their latter poems, will agree with me. And besides
this, they write in Alexandrines or verses of six feet, such
as, amongst us, is the old translation of Homer by Chapman; 10
all which by lengthening 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 hasten to acquaint you with my endeavours in the 15
writing. In general I will only say I have never yet seen
the description of any naval fight in the proper terms which
are used at sea; and if there be any such in another language,
as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharsalia, yet I could
not prevail myself of it in the English; the terms of arts 20
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 disorder and the slaughter;
but all these are common notions. And certainly as those
who in a logical dispute keep in general terms would hide 25
a fallacy, so those who do it in any poetical description would
veil their ignorance.

'Descriptas servare vices operumque colores
Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor ?'

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet 30
I have thought it no shame to learn; and if I have made
some few mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness,
because I have wanted opportunity to correct them, the
whole poem being first written, and now sent you from
a place where I have not so much as the converse of any 35
seaman. Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was
great, it was more than recompensed by the pleasure; I