It would have been highly injudicious for one who has rejected all poetical machinery, to have begun his poem with the ancient form of invoking a Muse. Indeed, in all modern writers this invocation appears little better than an unmeaning ceremony, practised by rote from ancient custom; and very properly makes a part of the receipt for an epic poem humourously laid down after the exact model of mechanical imitation, in the Spectator. Our author, with simple and unaffected dignity, thus opens at once into his subject:
Of all the Lombards, by their trophies known,
Who sought fame soon, and had her favour long,
King Aribert best seem’d to fill the throne,
And bred most business for heroick song.
This conquering monarch, we are soon acquainted, was blest with an only child, the heroine of the story,
Recorded Rhodalind! whose high renown
Who miss in books not luckily have read;
Or vex’d with living beauties of their own