“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669modern poets, and then Lisideius and Neander argue the virtues, respectively, of
the French and the English poets, Neander/Dryden makes a case for rhyme.^83 He is
answering the case against rhyme in drama urged by Crites, the dramatist Sir Robert
Howard, who was described by Toland as a “particular Acquaintance” and “a great
admirer of Milton to his dying day,” as well as “a hearty Friend to the Liberty of his
Country” and a vigorous critic of the “Heathen and Popish” Anglican clergy.^84
Howard reportedly told “many pleasant Stories” about Milton, including one in
which Milton jested that he had supported the republicans for their frugality, since
“the Trappings of a Monarchy might set up an ordinary Commonwealth” (EL
186). Their friendship probably began about this time, with the two men drawn
together by shared poetic and political views. In Dryden’s Essay all the debaters
acknowledge the stylistic excellence of modern poets in lyric and agree that “the
sweetness of English Verse was never understood or practised by our fathers.”^85
Neander/Dryden insists that rhyme is also the distinguishing excellence of modern
writers of tragedy and heroic drama, who cannot match the great English dramatists
of the previous age on other counts; he also affirms, categorically, that “Blank Verse
is acknowledg’d to be too low for a Poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if
too low for an ordinary Sonnet, how much more for Tragedy” – or for epic, he
implies, since drama and epic are of the same genus.^86 In his preface, Dryden states
that rhyme enjoys the favor of the court, “the last and surest judge of writing.”^87
If Simmons recognized that in this cultural milieu readers expected rhyme and
needed an explanation for its absence, Milton was happy to take up the gauntlet
thrown down by his erstwhile colleague, now the rising star on the poetic and
critical horizon. His note on “The Verse,” added in 1668, aggressively challenges
not only the new poetic norms but also, by implication, the debased court culture
and royalist politics that underpin them:
The measure in English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of
Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good
Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarious Age, to set off
wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous
modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance,
and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else
they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and
Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rime both in longer and shorter Works, as
have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious
eares, trivial 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.... 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 restored to
Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Riming. (sigs. a 3v–a 4)