Printed by T. Maiden, Sherbourne-Lane, FOR VERNOR AND HOOD, W. OTRIDGE & SON, AND J. NUNN. POETA nafcitur non fit, is a sentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being moft certain, that all the acquired learning ima ginable is infufficient to compleat a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to fo noble and fublime an art. And we may, without offence, obferve, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that fatyrical inspiration our author wittily invokes : Which made them, tho' it were in fpight On the other fide, fome whỏ hàve had very little human learning, but were endued with a large sharé of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated * 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 fciences, we are then bleffed with those lafting monuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth. And our author, had his modefty permitted him, might, with HORACE, have said, Exegi monumentum ære perennius: Ór, 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 laft compofition: for although he had not the happiness of an academical education, as A Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c. |