Excerpt from The Judgement of the Flood Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. It must, nevertheless, be granted, that a Sacred Poem, especially if it be also Epic, is an attempt only to be justified by its successful execution. Milton and Klop stock thus justified the attempt. Between the events to which the Paradise Lost and the Messia re fer, the occurrence of the universal deluge is that which would next excite the emulation of an ambi tious poet. B'odmer, however, and some of meaner note, have failed in their daring efforts to compass that high argument; and, unless encouraged by the highest literary authorities, the Author of the present Poem would probably have trembled to proceed with another. 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.