In its original form the work was an octavo of nearly four hundred pages divided into three parts: "Rules For making English Verse," a rhyming dictionary, and a poetical commonplace book containing all the "Most Natural, Agreeable, and Noble Thoughts" of the English poets digested alphabetically by their subject. Only the first part is reproduced here, but it seems desirable to say something about the book as a whole. 1] It is one of those works which is scorned by all, and used by all who scorn it. In the sixty years after its publication it went through nine editions, and though Charles...
In its original form the work was an octavo of nearly four hundred pages divided into three parts: "Rules For making English Verse," a rhyming diction...
The Art of English Poetry (1702) may be roughly described as an English version of the Gradus ad Parnassum. At least that is the tradition to which it belongs. Its immediate predecessor was the pleasant English Parnassus: Or, a Helpe to English Poesie (1657) compiled by a Middlesex schoolmaster named Joshua Poole, and this work was avowedly modeled on Ravisius Textor's Epitheta and the Thesaurus Poeticus of Joannes Buchler. But whereas the English Parnassus was designed for the schoolroom, the Art of English Poetry was designed for the world of polite letters, and so may be called the first...
The Art of English Poetry (1702) may be roughly described as an English version of the Gradus ad Parnassum. At least that is the tradition to which it...
