Pindarics

Pindarics (alternatively Pindariques or Pindaricks), the name by which was known a class of loose and irregular odes greatly in fashion in England during the close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. The invention is due to Abraham Cowley, who, probably in Paris, a place where he had no other books to direct him and perhaps in 1650, found a text of Pindar and determined to imitate the Greek poetry in English, without comprehension of the system upon which Pindar's prosody was built.