IN THREE PARTS, WRITTEN IN THE TIME OF THE LATE WARS: CORRECTED AND AMENDED. WITH LARGE ANNOTATIONS, AND PREFACE, BY ZACHARY GREY, LL. D. EMBELLISHED WITH ENGRAVINGS, BY T. ROWLANDSON, ESQ. VOL. I. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG, No. 111, CHEAPSIDE. TO THE READER. "POETA nascitur non fit," is a sentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquir'd learning imaginable is insufficient to compleat a poet, without a natural genius and propensity to so noble and sublime an art. And we may without offence observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only render'd themselves obnoxious to that satyrical inspiration, our author wittily invokes : Which made them, tho' it were in spight Of nature and their stars, to write. On the other side, some who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts, have been the most celebrated poets of the age they liv'd in. But as these last are, Rara Aves in Terris; so when the muses have not disdain'd the assistance of other arts and sciences, we are then blest with those lasting monuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kind of eternity upon earth. And our author, had his modesty permitted him, might with Horace have said, Exegi Monumentum Ære perennius; Or with Ovid, Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis Ira, nec Ignis, The author of this celebrated poem was of this last composition; for altho' he had not the happiness of an academical education, as some affirm, it may be perceiv'd, throughout his whole poem, that he had read much, and was very well accomplish'd in the most useful parts of human learning. Rupin (in his reflections) speaking of the necessary qualities belonging to a poet, tells us, He must have a genius extraordinary: great natural gifts; a wit, just, fruitful, piercing, solid and universal; an understanding, clear and distinct; an imagination, neat and Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c. 366 a 2 |