the destruction being so swift, so sudden, so vast and miserable, as nothing can parallel in story.  The former part of this poem, relating to the war, is but a due expiation for my not having served my king and country in it.  All gentlemen are almost obliged to it; and I know no reason we should give that advantage to the commonalty of England, to be foremost 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 AEneids.  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 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