Paradise lost a poem in twelve books / the author John Milton.

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 bar∣barous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carri∣ed away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to ex∣press 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 Trage∣dies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious ears, triveal and of no true musical delight; which consists onely 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 ra∣ther is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to He∣roic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage, of Rimeing.