1. 14, he says. See Milton's introductory note to "Paradise Lost on The Verse" (Globe edit., p. 41; Aldine i. 148).

1. 17, Earl of Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547), translated two books of Virgil, not one, as Johnson supposed. His blank verse translation of bks. ii. and iv. of the "Eneid" appeared in 1557, or earlier.

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1. 18, a few short poems. For instance, two poems of about one hundred lines each, by Grimald, in "Tottel's Miscellany" (1557). Johnson probably overlooked Gascoigne's "Steel Glass" (1576), a poem of over eleven hundred lines. 1. 20, Written by Raleigh himself. "De Guiana Carmen Epicum. Authore G. C.' Printed in Hakluyt, vol. iii. Oldys attributes it to George Chapman. Sufficient attention has not been paid to this early and thoughtful specimen of blank verse (Cunningham).

1. 24, Trisino's "Italia Liberata." Giovanni Trissino (14781550), published his "Italia Liberata" in 1548. "No one has ever pretended to rescue from the charge of dulness and insipidity the epic poem of the father of blank verse, Trissino, on the liberation of Italy from the Goths by Belisarius. It is, of all long poems that are remembered at all, the most unfortunate in its reputation" (Hallam, "Literature of Europe," i. 422).

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1. 27, he says. Note on The Verse." "Rime being no necessary adjunct, or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre."

1. 28, as a mental operation, that is, as not yet expressed in words.

p. 79, 1. 11, an ingenious critic. This, as Boswell relates, was "Mr. Lock, of Norbury Park, in Surrey, whose knowledge and taste in the fine arts is universally celebrated" ("Life of Johnson," Bohn, iv. 8).

Another “ingenious critic," Cowper the poet, asks, “Was there ever anything so delightful as the music of 'Paradise Lost'? It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and deepest notes of majesty, with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute. Variety without end, and never equalled, unless perhaps by Virgil" (Cowper to Unwin, October 31st, 1779).

Dryden bluntly affirms that "Milton's own particular reason (for not using rhyme) "is plainly this-that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it, which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia,' or verses written in his youth, where the rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer,

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though not a poet" ("Discourse of Satire," Cassell's National Library, pp. 22-23).

1. 16, lapidary style, the style in which monumental inscriptions are written. See p. 8 and p. 90.

1. 19, whom Milton alleges. Not without cause, therefore, since both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works" (Note on "The Verse"). 1. 31, that vigour and amplitude of mind, to that vigorous and mighty mind, viz., Homer. Compare Introduction, p. xxiii. above.

p. 80, 1. 9, no exchange of praise, no interchange of compliments with other authors.