 Free verse in English was persuasively advocated by critic T. E. Hulme in his "A Lecture on Modern Poetry" (1908).Later in the preface to "Some Imagist Poets" 1916, he comments, "Only the name is new, you will find something much like "vers libre" in Dryden's "Threnodia Augustalis"; a great deal of Milton's "Samson Agonistes", and the oldest in Chaucer's "House of Fame".