but vague preliminary conceptions; even the opening lines, announcing the subject, failed to indicate its full nature and extent; not till people were actually some way into the poem could they tell that it contained Satan and the Wars in Heaven, and the Fall of the Rebel Angels, and the Creation of the World, and many other supernatural grandeurs, inwrought with the terrestrial story of Adam and Eve; nay, after the poem was read through, only very intelligent readers could grasp the scheme, or remember the connection of the parts! Might not all this be remedied if Mr. Milton would supply a Prose Sketch of the whole poem, divided into ten pieces to fit the ten Books? With some request like this Simmons must have gone to Milton in his house near Bunhill Fields; and Milton agreed to do what was wanted. He did so the more readily, perhaps, because he saw an opportunity, in doing so, of noticing another objection to his epic, of which Simmons may also have heard, though it must have reached Milton independently, and was more likely to rouse him than Simmons. The great objection among such of the critics and wits of the Restoration as had looked into the poem was that it did not rhyme. There was then a controversy between the partisans of rhyme and those of blank verse even for the drama; and it was incredible boldness for any one, in the midst of that controversy, to have put forth an Epic, a long narrative poem, written wholly in that kind of verse which many thought too lax for the stage itself. There was hardly a precedent for it in English; or anything that could be cited as a precedent was old, rare, and uncouth. Who could read such a poem? Who could take pleasure in it, coming incessantly to the ends of the lines and missing that boom of rhymes to which the English ear had been accustomed in all non-dramatic poetry from Chaucer downwards? Milton must have been longing to reply to this objection, to express his scorn for it; and Simmons's application for a prose argument to be prefixed to the poem, specifying the contents of the Books severally, gave him the opportunity. Accordingly, having dictated a prose argument, he added his well-known prefatory paragraph entitled "The Verse," in which he not
