Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/17

 "That Milton had a Genius equal to Spencer's, and greater than that of Cowley; that his Thoughts are elevated, his Words sounding, and that no Man has so happily copy'd the Manner of Homer; or so copiously translated his Grecisms, and the Latin Elegancies of Virgil." But then he says likewise, "That his Subject is not that of an Heroick Poem, properly so called; it being the losing of our happiness, where the Event is not prosperous like that of other Epick Works: That his Heavenly Machines are too many in proportion to the Human Personages, which are but two: That he runs into a Flat of Thought, sometimes for a hundred Lines together: That he was transported too far in the use of Obsolete Words: And lastly that he can, by no means approve of his Choice of Blank Verse." By this short view of our English Poets, which I have abstracted from Rymer and Dryden, one may clearly perceive how far short even they as well as their Neighbours have fell of the Excellencies and Perfections of Homer and Virgil.

But I must not leave Matters thus. For since my translating Bossu, and the thoughts I had of Publishing it, the World has been honour'd with an Excellent Heroick Poem in English, done by our own Country-man the Learned and Ingenious Dr. Blackmore: Which puts us Now upon thinking that the Poems of the two Ancients are not wholly unimitable. It may therefore be expected that in a Preface of this Nature, and in this part of it where we are treating of the vastness of the Genius that is requisite for Epick Poesie, something should be said on the Genius of that Author.

'Tis far from my design to set up for a Profest Critick, but that I may do some Justice to the Merits of that great Man, since no one else, as I hear of, has as yet Criticis'd publickly on the Poem, I shall venture to