Samuel Cobb, master at Christ’s Hospital, prefaced his 1707 poems with a prose argument against pedantic critics and for the liberty of writing. It is reprinted here with his poem Of Poetry, a verse survey running from Homer and Virgil through Chaucer, Spenser and Milton, together with an introduction gathering the little that is known of his life.
A small window on Augustan critical debate, for students of Dryden’s and Pope’s era. Download the free EPUB.