ABSTRACT
These reflexions1 will afford a proper solution of that question, which has been agitated by the critics, ‘Whether a work of fiction and imagination (such as that of the archbishop of Cambray,2 for instance) conducted, in other respects, according to the rules of the epic poem, but written in prose, may deserve the name of POEM, or not.’ For, though it be frivolous indeed to dispute about names, yet from what has been said it appears, that if metre be not incongruous to the nature of an epic composition, and it afford a pleasure which is not to be found in mere prose, metre is, for that reason, essential to this mode of writing; which is only saying in other words, that an epic composition, to give all the pleasure which it is capable of giving, must be written in verse.
