Excerpt from The Spirit of Discovery, or the Conquest of Ocean: A Poem, in Five Books I must also submit to the candour of the critic, the necessity Isometimes felt myself under of varying the verse, and admitting, when the sub je t seemed particularly to require it, a break into the ode measure, as where the Siege of Acre is introduced. He will consider, as this poem is neither didactic, nor epic, that might lead on the mind by diversity of chara ters, and of pros pects; it was therefore necesssary (at least I thought myself at liberty so to do) to break the uniformity of the subject by digression, contrast. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.