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Quote#Poetry

If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they…

Quote byJoseph Trapp · 1679–1747

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Preface to The Aeneis of Virgil (1718), p. xlvi.

English (original)

If some gentlemen are resolved that blank verse shall be prose, they have my free leave to enjoy their saying, provided I may have theirs to think they mean nothing by it, unless they can prove that rhyme is essential to metre; consequently that the Goths and monks were the first inventers of verse, and that Homer and Virgil, as well as Milton, wrote nothing but prose.

— Joseph Trapp

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