e our best
English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious eares,
triveal and of no true musical delight: which consists only in apt
Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out
from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings,
a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good
Oratory This neglect then of Rime so little is to be taken for a defect
though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be
esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty
recover'd to Heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of
Rimeing.

Note: The Verse] Added in 1668 to the copies then remaining of the first
edition; together with the Argument. In the second edition (1674) the
Argument, with the necessary adjustment to the division made in Books
vii and x, was distributed through the several books of the poem, as it
is here printed.

BOOK I.

THE ARGUMENT.

THIS first Book proposes first in brief the whole Subject, Mans
disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was plac't:
Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather Satan
in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many
Legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with
all his Crew into the great Deep. Which action past over, the Poem hasts
into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen
into Hell describ'd here, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be
suppos'd as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of
utter darknesse, fitliest call'd Chaos: Here Satan with his Angels lying
on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space
recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in Order and Dignity
lay by him; they confer of thir miserable fall. Satan awakens all his
Legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded; They rise,
thir Numbers, array of Battel, thir chief Leaders nam'd according to the
Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. To these
Satan directs his Speech, comforts them with hope yet of gaining Heaven,
but tells them lastly of a new World and new kind of Creature to be
created, according to an ancient Prophesie or report in Heaven; for that
Angels were long before this visible Creation, was the opinion of many
ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this Prophesie