which I am fure I have your approbation. The learned languages have certainly a great advantage of us, in not being tied to the flavery of any rhyme; and were lefs constrained in the quantity of every fyllable, which they might vary with fpondees or dactyls, befides fo many other helps of grammatical figures, for the lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the modern are in the close of that one fyllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts, the sense of all the reft. But in this neceffity of our rhymes, I have always found the couplet verse most easy, though not fo proper for this occafion for there the work is fooner 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 fo, but to bear along in his head the troublesome sense of four lines together. For thofe, who write correctly in this kind, must needs acknowlege, that the last line of the stanza is to be confidered in the compofition of the first. Neither can we give our selves the liberty of making any part of a verse for the fake 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 line, with the Spaniard promiscuously, with the French alternately; as those who have read the Alarique, the Pucelle, or any of their later poems, will agree with me. And befides this, they write in Alexandrins, or verses of fix feet; fuch as amongst us is the old translation of Homer by Chapman: all which, by lengthning of their chain, makes the fphere 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 haften to acquaint you with my endeavours in the writing. In general I will only fay, I have never yet seen the defcription of any naval fight in the proper terms which are used at sea: and if there be any fuch, in another language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharfàlia, yet I could not avail myself of it in the English; the terms of art 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 fmoke, the diforder, and the flaughter; but all these are common

notions. And certainly, as thofe, who, in a lo-
gical difpute keep in general terms, would hide
a fallacy; fo thofe, who do it in any poetical
description, would veil their ignorance.

Defcriptas fervare vices operumque colores,
Cur ego, fi nequeo ignoroque, Poeta falutor?

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of
the sea, yet I have thought it no shame to learn :
and if I have made some few mistakes, 'tis only,
as you can bear me witness, because I have
wanted opportunity to correct them; the whole
poem being first written, and now fent you from
a place, where I have not so much as the con-
verse of any seaman. Yet though the trouble
I had in writing it was great, it was more than
recompenfed by the pleasure. I found myself
fo warm in celebrating the praises of military
men, two fuch especially as the prince and ge-
neral, that it is no wonder if they infpired me
with thoughts above my ordinary level. And I
am well satisfied, that, as they are incomparably
the best subject I ever had, excepting only the
royal family, fo alfo, that this I have written of

t

:

them is much better than what I have performed on any other. I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here----Omnia fponte fua reddit juftiffima tellus. I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; fo fertile, that without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a fummer, and in both oppreffed the reaper. All other greatnefs' in fubjects is only counterfeit it will not endure the teft of danger; the greatness of arms is only real: other greatness burdens a nation with its weight; this fupports it with its strength. And as it is the happiness of the age, fo it is the peculiar goodness of the best of kings, that we may praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless it proceeds from a just confidence of his own virtue, which the luftre of no other can be fo great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never fafely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digreffion to a farther account of my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, fo

much more to exprefs thofe thoughts with elocution. The compofition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the and wit in the poet, or wit-writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-diftinction) is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble fpaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, 'till it springs the quarry it hunted after: or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the fpecies or ideas of those things which it defigns to represent. Wit written is that which is well defined, the happy refult of thought, or product of imagination. But to proceed from wit, in the general notion of it, to the proper wit of an heroic or historical poem; I judge it chiefly to consist in the delightful imaging of perfons, actions, paffions, or things. "Tis not the jerk or sting of an epigram, nor the seeming contradiction of a poor antithefis (the delight of an ill-judging audience in a play of rhyme) for the gingle of a more poor Paranomafia; neither is it fo much the morality of a grave sentence, affected by Lucan, but more sparingly ufed by Virgil; but it is fome lively and apt defcription, dreffed in fuch colours of speech, that