THE VERSE. [A] THE measure is English heroick verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rime being no neceffary adjunct, or true ornament, of poem or good verfe, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to fet off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed fince by the use of fome famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the moft part worse than else they would have expreffed them. Not without caufe, therefore, fome both [B] Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works: as have also long fince our beft [c] English tragedies: as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which confifts only in apt numbers, fit quantity of fyllables, and the fense 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 [D] poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime fo little is to be taken for a [E] defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it is rather to be efteemed an example fet, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered, to heroick poem, from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming.. [A] The Verfe.] The first edition of Paradife Loft, in 1667, was without this preface, or apology for the verfe. In 1668, when a new title-page was prefixed to the edition, it was added with the following addrefs of the Printer to the reader: “Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first intended to the Book; but, for the fatisfaction of many that have defired it, I have procured it, and withal a reafon of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem rimes not." TODD. [B] both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note] Taffo's poem on the Creation was now in Milton's mind. See likewife the Inquiry into the, Origin of Par. Loft. Among the Italians alfo, Triffino and Rucellai have abandoned the use of rhyme ; the former, in his Italia Liberata di Goti, an heroick poem; the latter, in a didactick poem, entitled Le Api, which will remain a lasting monument that the Italian language requires not the fhackles of rhyme to render it harmonious." Rofcoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, 2d edit. vol. ii. p. 152. Luigi Alamanni's imitation of the Antigone of Sophocles, which appeared in 1532, and his didactick poem of Coltivazione, printed at Paris in 1546, are both in blank verfe. The rejection of rhyme in Italian poetry. was also powerfully urged, in the fixteenth century, by Felice Figlinei, who, “in his admirable Italian commentary on the Ethicks of Ariftotle, enforces his advice by his own example, and tranflates all Ariftotle's quotations from Homer and Euripides into verfe without rhyme." Hift. of Eng. Poetry, vol. iii. p. 24. The Georgicks of Virgil are alfo thus tranflated. "La Georgica di Vergilio con sciolti versi tradutta in lingua Thofcana dal magnifico M. Antonio Mario Negrifoli, nobile Ferrarefe. Vinegia, 1552." Of the Origin of Verf Sciolti among the Italians, fee Walker's Hiftorical Memoir of Italian Tragedy, 1799. Append. p. xx. Among the Spanish poets, Mr. Bowle mentions Francifco de Aldana, who translated the Epistles of Ovid into Spanish blank verfe; and Gonfalvo Perez, who, in like manner, translated the Odyssey of Homer. And he adds, that Garcilaffo de la Vega, Principe de los Poetas Caftellanos, in the Epiftola a Bofcan, folios 49, 50, 51, ed. Madrid, 1622, has given a specimen of blank verfe. It should be added, that Bofcan has given fimilar fpecimens in his poetry, and that there is alfo extant in Spanish blank verfe, a poem, entitled La Suma de Philofophia, by Alonzo de Fuentes of Seville, published there in 1547. There are alfo Dutch and French poets, who have broken the bondage of rhyme. See Fabricius, Bib. Lat. lib. ii. c. 10. p. 383.-Dr. Woodford, afferting that English poetry without rhythm is barely if at all diftinguishable from profe, adds, "Not fo the Italian and Spanish blank verfe, from whom the great and learned Mr. Milton, I believe, took his meafures. For though (to inftance in the Italian and their compofitions of that kind) Annibal Caro in his most excellent tranflation of Virgil, and Torquato Taffo in his Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato, have avoided rhythms; yet they retained the proper character of the Italian verfe; I mean as to the form, equivalent to our rhythm, which ever ends with a folitary fyllable for the last foot, unless we make the last foot confift rather of three fyllables by an antibacchius, as hōrrōrē cuftūmě, or by an amphibrachys, as in plūmě inante, be there rhythm used, or be there none; though if there be rhythm, the chime or tune refts both upon the last and the last syllable fave one; by which mark or triffyllable foot indifferent to both, and the fyllabical quantities of the Italian words which approach and, except in fome few inftances, directly follow the Latine, |