Page:Gondibert, an heroick poem - William Davenant (1651).djvu/65

 necessarie for Poets in those times, to write in Verse.

The Verse which the Greeks, and Latines (considering the nature of their own languages) found by experience most grave, and for an Epique Poem most decent, was their Hexameter; a Verse limited, not onely in the length of the line, but also in the quantitie of the syllables. In stead of which we use the line of ten Syllables, recompensing the neglect of their quantitie, with the diligence of Rime. And this measure is so proper for an Heroique Poem, as without some loss of gravitie and dignitie, 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 glorie from a needless difficultie, as he that contrived Verses into the form 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 Epique Poem, for a man to obstruct his own way with unprofitable difficulties, is great imprudence. So likewise to chuse a needless and difficult correspondence of Rime, 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 Rime Alternate.

For the choice of your Subject, you have sufficiently justified your self 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 believe you are not acquainted with any great man of the race of Gondibert, I adde to your Justification the puritie 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 Poesie.