in brave actions, which the nobles of France would never suffer in their
peasants. I should not have written this but to a person who has been
ever forward to appear in all employments, whither his honour and
generosity have called him. The latter part of my poem, which describes
the Fire, I owe, first to the piety and fatherly affection of our
monarch to his suffering subjects; and, in the second place, to the
courage, loyalty, and magnanimity of the city: both which were so
conspicuous, that I wanted words to celebrate them as they deserve. I
have called my poem Historical, not Epic, though both the actions and
actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. But since the action
is not properly one, nor that accomplished in the last successes, I have
judged it too bold a title for a few stanzas, which are little more in
number than a single Iliad, or the longest of the Æneids. For this
reason (I mean not of length, but broken action, tied too severely to
the laws of history) I am apt to agree with those who rank Lucan rather
among historians in verse, than Epic poets: in whose room, if I am not
deceived, Silius Italicus, though a worse writer, may more justly be
admitted. I have chosen to write my poem in quatrains, or stanzas of
four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble, and
of greater dignity, both for the sound and number, than any other verse
in use amongst us; in which I am sure I have your approbation. The
learned languages have certainly a great advantage of us, in not being
tied to the slavery of any rhyme; and were less constrained in the
quantity of every syllable, which they might vary with spondees or
dactyls, besides so many other helps of grammatical figures, for the
lengthening or abbreviation of them, than the modern are in the close of
that one syllable, which often confines, and more often corrupts, the
sense of all the rest. But in this necessity of our rhymes, I have
always found the couplet verse most easy, though not so proper for this
occasion: for there the work is sooner at an end, every two lines