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,
  Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, Poeta salutor?

For my own part, if I had little knowledge of the sea, yet I have thought it no shame to learn:  and if I have made some few mistakes, it is only, as you can bear me witness, because I have wanted opportunity to correct them; the whole poem being first written, and now sent you from a place, where I have not so much as the converse of any seaman.  Yet though the trouble I had in writing it was great, it was more than recompensed by the pleasure.  I found myself so warm in celebrating the praises of military men, two such especially as the prince[36] and general, that it is no wonder if they inspired me with thoughts above my ordinary level.  And I am well satisfied, that, as they are incomparably the best subject I ever had, excepting only the royal family, so also, that this I have written of them is much better than what I have performed on any other.  I have been forced to help out other arguments; but this has been bountiful to me:  they have been low and barren of praise, and I have exalted them, and made them fruitful; but here—­Omnia sponte sua reddit justissima tellus.  I have had a large, a fair, and a pleasant field; so fertile that, without my cultivating, it has given me two harvests in a summer, and in both oppressed the reaper.  All other greatness in subjects is only counterfeit; it will not endure the test of danger; the greatness of arms is only real; other greatness burdens a nation with its weight, this supports it with its strength.  And as it is the happiness of the age, so it is the