concluding the labour of the poet; but in quatrains he is to carry it
further on, and not only so, but to bear along in his head the
troublesome sense of four lines together. For those who write correctly
in this kind must needs acknowledge, that the last line of the stanza is
to be considered in the composition of the first. Neither can we give
ourselves the liberty of making any part of a verse for the sake 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 among 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 besides this, they write in
Alexandrius, or verses of six feet; such as amongst us is the old
translation of Homer by Chapman: all which, by lengthening of their
chain, makes the sphere 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 hasten to
acquaint you with my endeavours in the writing. In general, I will only
say, I have never yet seen the description of any naval fight in the
proper terms which are used at sea: and if there be any such, in another
language, as that of Lucan in the third of his Pharsalia, 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 smoke, the disorder, and
the slaughter; but all these are common notions. And certainly, as those
who, in a logical dispute, keep in general terms, would hide a fallacy;
so those who do it in any poetical description, would veil their
ignorance.

Descriptas servare vices operumque colores,