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I.Var Gucht Scul

M." SAMUEL BUTLER

IN THREE PARTS.

WRITTEN IN THE TIME OF THE

LATE WARS.

By SAMUEL BUTLER, Efq;

A NEW EDITION, CORRECTED.

ADORNED WITH CUTS.

GLASGO w:

Printed by R. URIE. M DCC LIII.

POOL LIBR 5-SER 1917

MAFORD

TO THE

READER.

P

OETA nafcitur non fit, is a fentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired learning imaginable is infufficient to complete a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to fo noble and fublime an art. And we may, with

out offence, obferve, that many very learned men, who have been thought ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that fatirical inspiration, our author wittily invokes :

Which made them, though it were in spite
Of nature, and their stars to write.

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 celebrated poets of the age they liv ed in. But as thefe laft are, rarae aves in terris; fo when the mufes have `not disdained the afiftances of other arts and sciences, we are

Shakefpear, D'Avenant, etc.

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