These rules I have, according to the best of my judgment, endeavoured to extract from the practice, and to frame after the examples, of the poets that are most celebrated for a fluent and numerous turn of verse.

In the English versification there are two things chiefly to be considered:

1. The verses.

2. The several sorts of poems, or composition in verse.

But because in the verses there are also two things to be observed, the structure of the verse and the rhyme, this treatise shall be divided into three chapters;

I. Of the structure of English verses.

II. Of rhyme.

III. Of the several sorts of poems, or composition in verse.