INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
PREFACERULES FOR MAKING ENGLISH VERSE
CHAP. I.
CHAP. II.
CHAP. III.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
EDWARD BYSSHE
(1708)
With an Introduction byA. Dwight Culler
Publication Number 40
Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1953
GENERAL EDITORS
H. Richard Archer, Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington
Benjamin Boyce, Duke University
Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan
John Butt, King's College, University of Durham
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Edward Niles Hooker, University of California, Los Angeles
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Earnest Mossner, University of Texas
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library
The Art of English Poetry (1702) may be roughly described as anEnglish version of the Gradus ad Parnassum. At least that is thetradition to which it belongs. Its immediate predecessor was thepleasant English Parnassus: Or, a Helpe to English Poesie (1657)compiled by a Middlesex schoolmaster named Joshua Poole, and this workwas avowedly modeled on Ravisius Textor's Epitheta and the ThesaurusPoeticus of Joannes Buchler. But whereas the English Parnassus wasdesigned for the schoolroom, the Art of English Poetry was designedfor the world of polite letters, and so may be called the first examplein English of the handbook for the serious poet.
In its original form the work was an octavo of nearly four hundred pagesdivided into three parts: "Rules For making English Verse," a rh