Edward Bysshe

The Art of English Poetry (1708) "", has been considered a very important part of the human history, but is currently not available in printed formats. Hence so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format so that it is never forgotten and always remembered by the present and future generations. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT136726The three parts each have separate pagination; the register is continuous. With a half-title. London: printed for Sam. Buckley: and sold by Dan. Midwinter, 1705. 4],36, 2], viii,38, 8],436p.; 8

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 example in English of the handbook for the serious poet. 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 Gildon thought it "a book too scandalously mean to name," he was constrained to admit that it had "spread, by many editions, thro' all England" and had "carried off so many Impressions, as have made it with the ignorant, the Standard of Writing." 2] Not only with the ignorant. Pope knew and used the work, and likewise Richardson, Fielding, Isaac Watts, Johnson, Goldsmith, Walpole, Blake, Sir Walter Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, and many others. Indeed, it would be safe to say that there was hardly a literary man in the eighteenth century who was not familiar with it. If he used a rhyming dictionary, he used that in Bysshe, at least until 1775, when it was superseded by John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language. And if he used a poetical commonplace book, he used either Bysshe or one of the five other works which were produced in imitation of Bysshe. "Quoi qu'ils en disent," said the Abb du Bos of a similar work in French, "ils ont tous ce livre dans leur arri re cabinet."