TO THE READER. POETA nafcitur, non fit, is a fentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, at all the acquired learning imaginable is infufficient to complete a poet, without a natural genius and propenfity to fo noble and fublime an art. And we may, ithout offence, obferve, that many very learned men, bo have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themfelves obnoxious to that fatirical inSpiration our author wittily invokes; Which made then, though it were in fpite On the other fide, fome who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large fhare · of natural wit and parts, have become the most cele brated poets of the age they lived in. But as thefe laft are rare aves in terris; fo when the Mufes have not difdained the affiftances of other arts and Sciences, we are then bleffed with thefe lafting monuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth. And our author, had his mo. defty permitted him, might, with Horace, have faid, Exegi monumentum ære perennius Or, with Ovid, Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetuftas. The author of this celebrated poem was of this left compofition: for, although he had not the happiness of an academical education, as fome affirm, it may be * Shakespeare, D'Avenant, &c. |