Sir,

If to commend your poem, I should only say, in general terms, that in the choice of your argument, the disposition of the parts, the maintenance of the characters of your persons, the dignity and vigour of your expression, you have performed all the parts of various experience, ready memory, clear judgment, swift and well-governed fancy: though it were enough for the truth, it were too little for the weight and credit of my testimony. For I lie open to two exceptions, one of an incompetent, the other of a corrupted witness. Incompetent, because I am not a poet; and corrupted with the honour done me by your preface. The former obliges me to say something, by the way, of the nature and differences of poesy.

As philosophers have divided the universe, their subject, into three regions, celestial, aerial, and terrestial; so the poets, whose work it is, by imitating human life, in delightful and measured lines, to avert men from vice, and incline them to virtuous and honourable actions, have lodged themselves in the three regions of mankind, court, city, and country, correspondent, in some proportion, to those three regions of the world. For there is in princes, and men of conspicuous power, anciently called heroes, a lustre and influence upon the rest of men, resembling that of the heavens; and an insincereness, inconstancy, and troublesome humour in those that dwell in populous cities, like the mobility, blustering, and impurity of the air; and a plainness, and, though dull, yet a nutritive faculty in rural people, that endures a comparison with the earth they labour.

From hence have proceeded three sorts of poesy, heroic, scommatic, and pastoral. Every one of these is distinguished again in the manner of representation; which sometimes is narrative, wherein the poet himself relateth; and sometimes dramatic, as when the persons are every one adorned and brought upon the theatre, to speak and act their own parts. There is therefore neither more nor less than six sorts of poesy. For the heroic poem narrative, such as is yours, is called an epic poem; the heroic poem dramatic, is tragedy. The scommatic narrative is satire; dramatic is comedy. The pastoral narrative, is called simply pastoral, anciently bucolic; the same dramatic, pastoral comedy. The figure therefore of an epic poem, and of a tragedy, ought to be the same: for they differ no more but in that they are pronounced by one, or many persons; which I insert to justify the figure of yours, consisting of five books divided into songs, or cantos; as five acts divided into scenes, has ever been the approved figure of a tragedy.

They that take for poesy whatsoever is writ in verse, will think this division imperfect, and call in sonnets, epigrams, eclogues, and the like pieces, which are but essays, and parts of an entire poem; and reckon Empedocles and Lucretius, natural philosophers, for poets; and the moral precepts of Phocylides Theognis, and the quatrains of Pybrach, and the history of Lucan, and others of that kind, amongst poems: bestowing on such writers, for honour, the name of poets, rather than of historians or philosophers. But the subject of a poem is the manners of men, not natural causes; manners presented, not dictated; and manners feigned, as the name of poesy imports, not found in men. They that give entrance to fictions writ in prose, err not so much; but they err; for prose requireth delightfulness, not only of fiction, but of style; in which if prose contend with verse, it is with disadvantage and, as it were, on foot against the strength and wings of Pegasus.

For verse amongst the Greeks was appropriated anciently to the service of their Gods, and was the holy style; the style of the oracles; the style of the laws; and the style of the men that publicly recommended to their Gods the vows and thanks of the people, which was done in their holy songs called hymns; and the composers of them were called prophets and priests, before the name of poet was known. When afterwards the majesty of that style was observed, the poets chose it as best becoming their high invention. And for the antiquity of verse, it is greater than the antiquity of letters. For it is certain, Cadmus was the first that from Phœnicia, a country that neighboureth Judea, brought the use of letters into Greece. But the service of the Gods, and the laws, which by measured sounds were easily committed to the memory, had been long time in use before the arrival of Cadmus there.

There is, besides the grace of style, another cause why the ancient poets chose to write in measured language; which is this. Their poems were made at first with intention to have them sung, as well epic as dramatic (which custom hath been long time laid aside, but began to be revived in part, of late years, in Italy,) and could not be made commensurable to the voice or instruments, in prose; the ways and motions whereof are so uncertain and undistinguished, like the way and motion of a ship in the sea, as not only to discompose the best composers, but also to disappoint sometimes the most attentive reader, and put him to hunt counter for the sense. It was therefore necessary for poets in those times to write in verse.

The verse which the Greeks and Latins, considering the nature of their own languages, found by experience most grave, and for an epic poem most decent, was their hexameter; a verse limited not only in the length of the line, but also in the quantity of the syllables. Instead of which we use the line of ten syllables, recompensing the neglect of their quantity with the diligence of rhyme. And this measure is so proper to an heroic poem, as without some loss of gravity or dignity, it was never changed. A longer is not far from ill prose; and a shorter, is a kind of whisking, you know, like the unlacing, rather than the singing of a muse. In an epigram or a sonnet, a man may vary his measures, and seek glory from a needless difficulty; as he that contrived verses into the forms of an organ, a hatchet, an egg, an altar, and a pair of wings; but in so great and noble a work as is an epic poem, for a man to obstruct his own way with unprofitable difficulties, is great imprudence. So likewise to choose a needless and difficult correspondence of rhyme, is but a difficult toy, and forces a man sometimes, for the stopping of a chink, to say somewhat he did never think. I cannot therefore but very much approve your stanza, wherein the syllables in every verse are ten, and the rhyme alternate.

For the choice of your subject you have sufficiently justified yourself in your preface. But because I have observed in Virgil, that the honour done to Æneas and his companions, has so bright a reflection upon Augustus Cæsar, and other great Romans of that time, as a man may suspect him not constantly possessed with the noble spirit of those his heroes; and I believe you are not acquainted with any great man of the race of Gondibert, I add to your justification the purity of your purpose, in having no other motive of your labour, but to adorn virtue, and procure her lovers; than which there cannot be a worthier design, and more becoming noble poesy.

In that you make so small account of the example of almost all the approved poets, ancient and modern, who thought fit in the beginning, and sometimes also in the progress of their poems, to invoke a Muse, or some other deity, that should dictate to them, or assist them in their writings; they that take not the laws of art, from any reason of their own, but from the fashion of precedent times, will perhaps accuse your singularity. For my part, I neither subscribe to their accusation, nor yet condemn that heathen custom, otherwise than as accessory to their false religion. For their poets were their divines; had the name of prophets; exercised amongst the people a kind of spiritual authority; would be thought to speak by a divine spirit; have their works which they writ in verse (the divine style) pass for the word of God, and not of man, and to be hearkened to with reverence. Do not the divines, excepting the style, do the same, and by us that are of the same religion cannot justly be reprehended for it? Besides, in the use of the spiritual calling of divines, there is danger sometimes to be feared, from want of skill, such as is reported of unskilful conjurers, that mistaking the rites and ceremonious points of their art, call up such spirits, as they cannot at their pleasure allay again; by whom storms are raised, that overthrow buildings, and are the cause of miserable wrecks at sea. Unskilful divines do oftentimes the like; for when they call unseasonably for zeal, there appears a spirit of cruelty; and by the like error, instead of truth, they raise discord; instead of wisdom, fraud; instead of reformation, tumult; and controversy, instead of religion. Whereas in the heathen poets, at least in those whose works have lasted to the time we are in, there are none of those indiscretions to be found, that tended to the subversion, or disturbance of the commonwealths wherein they lived. But why a Christian should think it an ornament to his poem, either to profane the true God, or invoke a false one, I can imagine no cause, but a reasonless imitation of custom; of a foolish custom, by which a man enabled to speak wisely from the principles of nature, and his own meditation, loves rather to be thought to speak by inspiration, like a bagpipe.

Time and education beget experience; experience begets memory; memory begets judgment and fancy; judgment begets the strength and structure, and fancy begets the ornaments of a poem. The ancients therefore fabled not absurdly, in making Memory the mother of the Muses. For memory is the world, though not really, yet so as in a looking-glass, in which the judgment, the severer sister, busieth herself in a grave and rigid examination of all the parts of nature, and in registering by letters their order, causes, uses, differences, and resemblances; whereby the fancy, when any work of art is to be performed, finds her materials at hand and prepared for use, and needs no more than a swift motion over them, that what she wants, and is there to be had, may not lie too long unespied. So that when she seemeth to fly from one Indies to the other, and from heaven to earth, and to penetrate into the hardest matter and obscurest places, into the future, and into herself, and all this in a point of time, the voyage is not very great, herself being all she seeks. And her wonderful celerity, consisteth not so much in motion, as in copious imagery discreetly ordered, and perfectly registered in the memory; which most men under the name of philosophy have a glimpse of, and is pretended to by many, that grossly mistaking her, embrace contention in her place. But so far forth as the fancy of man has traced the ways of true philosophy, so far it hath produced very marvellous effects to the benefit of mankind. All that is beautiful or defensible in building; or marvellous in engines and instruments of motion; whatsoever commodity men receive from the observations of the heavens, from the description of the earth, from the account of time, from walking on the seas; and whatsoever distinguisheth the civility of Europe, from the barbarity of the American savages; is the workmanship of fancy, but guided by the precepts of true philosophy. But where these precepts fail, as they have hitherto failed in the doctrine of moral virtue, there the architect Fancy must take the philosopher’s part upon herself. He, therefore, who undertakes an heroic poem, which is to exhibit a venerable and amiable image of heroic virtue, must not only be the poet, to place and connect, but also the philosopher, to furnish and square his matter; that is, to make both body and soul, colour and shadow of his poem out of his own store; which, how well you have performed I am now considering.

Observing how few the persons be you introduce in the beginning, and how in the course of the actions of these, the number increasing, after several confluences, they run all at last into the two principal streams of your poem, Gondibert and Oswald, methinks the fable is not much unlike the theatre. For so, from several and far distant sources, do the lesser brooks of Lombardy, flowing into one another, fall all at last into the two main rivers, the Po and the Adige. It hath the same resemblance also with a man’s veins, which proceeding from different parts, after the like concourse, insert themselves at last into the two principal veins of the body. But when I considered that also the actions of men, which singly are inconsiderable, after many conjunctures, grow at last either into one great protecting power, or into two destroying factions, I could not but approve the structure of your poem, which ought to be no other than such as an imitation of human life requireth.

In the streams themselves I find nothing but settled valour, clean honour, calm counsel, learned diversion, and pure love; save only a torrent or two of ambition, which, though a fault, has somewhat heroic in it, and therefore must have place in an heroic poem. To shew the reader in what place he shall find every excellent picture of virtue you have drawn, is too long. And to show him one, is to prejudice the rest; yet I cannot forbear to point him to the description of love in the person of Bertha, in the seventh canto of the second book. There has nothing been said of that subject, neither by the ancient nor modern poets, comparable to it. Poets are painters; I would fain see another painter draw so true, perfect, and natural a love to the life, and make use of nothing but pure lines, without the help of any the least uncomely shadow, as you have done. But let it be read as a piece by itself: for in the almost equal height of the whole, the eminence of parts is lost.

There are some that are not pleased with fiction, unless it be bold; not only to exceed the work, but also the possibility of nature; they would have impenetrable armours, enchanted castles, invulnerable bodies, iron men, flying horses, and a thousand other such things, which are easily feigned by them that dare. Against such I defend you, without assenting to those that condemn either Homer or Virgil; by dissenting only from those that think the beauty of a poem consisteth in the exorbitancy of the fiction. For as truth is the bound of historical, so the resemblance of truth is the utmost limit of poetical liberty. In old time amongst the heathen, such strange fictions and metamorphoses were not so remote from the articles of their faith, as they are now from ours, and therefore were not so unpleasant. Beyond the actual works of nature a poet may now go; but beyond the conceived possibility of nature, never. I can allow a geographer to make in the sea, a fish or a ship, which by the scale of his map would be two or three hundred miles long, and think it done for ornament, because it is done without the precincts of his undertaking: but when he paints an elephant so, I presently apprehend it as ignorance, and a plain confession of terra incognita.

As the description of great men and great actions is the constant design of a poet; so the descriptions of worthy circumstances are necessary accessions to a poem, and being well performed, are the jewels and most precious ornaments of poesy. Such in Virgil are the funeral games of Anchises, the duel of Æneas and Turnus, &c. And such in yours, are the Hunting, the Battle, the City Mourning, the Funeral, the House of Astragon, the Library and the Temple; equal to his, or those of Homer whom he imitated.

There remains now no more to be considered but the expression, in which consisteth the countenance and colour of a beautiful Muse; and is given her by the poet out of his own provision, or is borrowed from others. That which he hath of his own, is nothing but experience and knowledge of nature, and specially human nature; and is the true and natural colour. But that which is taken out of books, the ordinary boxes of counterfeit complexion, shows well or ill, as it hath more or less resemblance with the natural; and are not to be used without examination unadvisedly. For in him that professes the imitation of nature, as all poets do, what greater fault can there be, than to betray an ignorance of nature in his poem; especially, having a liberty allowed him, if he meet with any thing he cannot master, to leave it out?

That which giveth a poem the true and natural colour, consisteth in two things; which are, to know well, that is, to have images of nature in the memory distinct and clear; and to know much. A sign of the first is perspicuity, propriety, and decency; which delight all sorts of men, either by instructing the ignorant, or soothing the learned in their knowledge. A sign of the latter is novelty of expression, and pleaseth by excitation of the mind; for novelty causeth admiration, and admiration curiosity, which is a delightful appetite of knowledge.

There be so many words in use at this day in the English tongue, that, though of magnific sound, yet like the windy blisters of troubled waters, have no sense at all, and so many others that lose their meaning by being ill coupled; that it is a hard matter to avoid them. For having been obtruded upon youth in the schools, by such as make it, I think, their business there, as it is expressed by the best poet

they grow up with them, and gaining reputation with the ignorant, are not easily shaken off.

To this palpable darkness, I may also add the ambitious obscurity of expressing more than is perfectly conceived; or perfect conception in fewer words than it requires. Which expressions, though they have had the honour to be called strong lines, are indeed no better than riddles, and not only to the reader, but also after a little time to the writer himself, dark and troublesome.

To the propriety of expression I refer that clearness of memory, by which a poet when he hath once introduced any person whatsoever, speaking in his poem, maintaineth in him to the end the same character he gave him in the beginning. The variation whereof, is a change of pace, that argues the poet tired.

Of the indecencies of an heroic poem, the most remarkable are those that show disproportion either between the persons and their actions, or between the manners of the poet and the poem. Of the first kind, is the uncomeliness of representing in great persons the inhuman vice of cruelty, or the sordid vices of lust and drunkenness. To such parts, as those the ancient approved poets thought it fit to suborn, not the persons of men, but of monsters and beastly giants, such as Polyphemus, Cacus, and the Centaurs. For it is supposed a Muse, when she is invoked to sing a song of that nature, should maidenly advise the poet to set such persons to sing their own vices upon the stage; for it is not so unseemly in a tragedy. Of the same kind it is to represent scurrility, or any action or language that moveth much laughter. The delight of an epic poem consisteth not in mirth, but admiration. Mirth and laughter are proper to comedy and satire. Great persons, that have their minds employed on great designs, have not leisure enough to laugh, and are pleased with the contemplation of their own power and virtues, so as they need not the infirmities and vices of other men to recommend themselves to their own favour by comparison, as all men do when they laugh. Of the second kind, where the disproportion is between the poet and the persons of his poem, one is in the dialect of the inferior sort of people, which is always different from the language of the court. Another is, to derive the illustration of any thing from such metaphors or comparisons as cannot come into men’s thoughts, but by mean conversation, and experience of humble or evil arts, which the person of an epic poem cannot be thought acquainted with.

From knowing much, proceedeth the admirable variety and novelty of metaphors and similitudes, which are not possible to be lighted on in the compass of a narrow knowledge. And the want whereof compelleth a writer to expressions that are either defaced by time, or sullied with vulgar or long use. For the phrases of poesy, as the airs of music, with often hearing become insipid; the reader having no more sense of their force, than our flesh is sensible of the bones that sustain it. As the sense we have of bodies, consisteth in change of variety of impression, so also does the sense of language in the variety and changeable use of words. I mean not in the affectation of words newly brought home from travel, but in new, and withal significant, translation to our purposes, of those that be already received; and in far-fetched, but withal, apt, instructive, and comely similitudes.

Having thus, I hope, avoided the first exception, against the incompetency of my judgment, I am but little moved with the second, which is of being bribed by the honour you have done me, by attributing in your preface somewhat to my judgment. For I have used your judgment no less in many things of mine, which coming to light will thereby appear the better. And so you have your bribe again.

Having thus made way for the admission of my testimony, I give it briefly thus. I never yet saw poem, that had so much shape of art, health of morality, and vigour and beauty of expression, as this of yours. And but for the clamour of the multitude, that hide their envy of the present under a reverence of antiquity, I should say further, that it would last as long as either the Æneid, or Iliad, but for one disadvantage; and the disadvantage is this; the languages of the Greeks and Romans, by their colonies and conquests, have put off flesh and blood, and are become immutable, which none of the modern tongues are like to be. I honour antiquity; but that which is commonly called old time, is young time. The glory of antiquity is due, not to the dead, but to the aged.

And now, whilst I think of it, give me leave with a short discord to sweeten the harmony of the approaching close. I have nothing to object against your poem; but dissent only from something in your preface, sounding to the prejudice of age. It is commonly said, that old age is a return to childhood. Which methinks you insist on so long, as if you desired it should be believed. That is the note I mean to shake a little. That saying, meant only of the weakness of body, was wrested to the weakness of mind, by froward children, weary of the controlment of their parents, masters, and other admonitors. Secondly, the dotage and childishness they ascribe to age, is never the effect of time, but sometimes of the excesses of youth, and not a returning to, but a continual stay, with childhood. For they that wanting the curiosity of furnishing their memories with the rarities of nature in their youth, pass their time in making provision only for their ease and sensual delight, are children still at what years soever; as they that coming into a populous city, never going out of their inn, are strangers still, how long soever they have been there. Thirdly, there is no reason for any man to think himself wiser to-day than yesterday, which does not equally convince he shall be wiser to-morrow than to-day. Fourthly, you will be forced to change your opinion hereafter when you are old; and in the mean time you discredit all I have said before in your commendation, because I am old already. But no more of this.

I believe, Sir, you have seen a curious kind of perspective, where he that looks through a short hollow pipe upon a picture containing divers figures, sees none of those that are there painted, but some one person made up of their parts, conveyed to the eye by the artificial cutting of a glass. I find in my imagination an effect not unlike it, from your poem. The virtues you distribute there amongst so many noble persons, represent, in the reading, the image but of one man’s virtue to my fancy, which is your own; and that so deeply imprinted, as to stay for ever there, and govern all the rest of my thoughts and affections in the way of honouring and serving you to the utmost of my power, that am,

Paris, Jan. 10, 1650.