No More Learning

Yet as I read soon growing less severe,
I lik'd his Project, the success did fear;
Through that wide Field how he his way should find
O're which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he perplex'd the things he would explain,
And what was easie he should render vain.

Or if a Work so infinite he spann'd,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill imitating would excell)
Might hence presume the whole Creations day
To change in Scenes, and show it in a Play.

Pardon me, Mighty Poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinc'd, and none will dare
Within thy Labours to pretend a share,
Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit:
So that no room is here for Writers left,
But to detect their Ignorance or Theft.

That Majesty which through thy Work doth Reign
Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane,
And things divine thou treatst of in such state
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horrour on us seise,
Thou singst with so much gravity and ease;
And above humane flight dost soar aloft
With Plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The Bird nam'd from that Paradise you sing
So never flaggs, but always keeps on Wing.

Where couldst thou words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expence of mind?
Just Heav'n thee like Tiresias to requite
Rewards with Prophesie thy loss of sight.

Well mightst thou scorn thy Readers to allure
With tinkling Rhime, of thy own sense secure;
While the Town-Bayes 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 Praise thee must Commend.
Thy Verse created like thy Theme sublime,
In Number, Weight, and Measure, needs not Rhime.

A. M.
Note: On Paradise Lost] Added in the second edition 1674.




The Printer to the Reader.


Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first intended to the Book,
but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procur'd
it, and withall a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the
Poem Rimes not. S. Simmons.

Notes: The Printer to the Reader] Added in 1668 to the copies then
remaining of the first edition, amended in 1669, and omitted in 1670. I
have procur'd it, and. . . . not. 1669] is procured. 1668.




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 Verse, in longer Works especially, but the
Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame
Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets,
carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and
constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse
then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore
some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime
both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best
English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious eares,
triveal and of no true musical delight: which consists only in apt
Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out
from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings,
a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good
Oratory This neglect then of Rime so 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 set, the first in English, of ancient liberty
recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of
Rimeing.