SOLOMON ON THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. A POEM. IN THREE BOOKS. PREFACE. Ir is hard for a man to speak of himself with any tolerable fatisfaction or fuccefs: he can be no more pleafed in blaming himself than in reading a satire made on him by another; and though he may juftly defire that a friend fhould praife him, yet, if he makes his own panegyrick, he will get very few to read it. It is harder for him to speak of his own writings. An author is in the condition of a culprit; the publick are his judges: by allowing too much, and condefcending too far, he may injure his own caufe, and become a kind of felo de se; and by pleading and afferting too boldly, he may difpleafe the court that fits upon him; his apology may only heighten his accufation. I would avoid thefe extremes; and though { grant it would not be very civil to trouble the reader with a long preface before he enters upon an indiffe rent poem, I would fay fomething to perfuade him to take as it is, or to excuse it for not being better. The noble images and reflections, the profound reafonings upon human actions, and excellent precepts for the government of life, which are found in the Proverbs, Ecclefiaftes, and other books commonly attributed to Solomon, afford fubjects for finer poems in every kind than have I think as yet appeared in the Greek, Latin, or any modern language: how far they were verfe in their original is a differtation not to be entered into at prefent. Out of this great treasure, which lies heaped up together in a confused magnificence, above all order, I had a mind to collect and digest such obfervations and apothegms as most particularly tend to the proof of that great affertion laid down in the beginning of the Ecclefiaftes, All is vanity. Upon the subject thus chosen, such various images prefent themselves to a writer's mind, that he muft find it easier to judge what should be rejected than what ought to be received. The difficulty lies in drawing and difpofing, or (as the painters term it) in grouping fuch a multitude of different objects, preferving ftill the justice and conformity of style and colouring, the fimplex duntaxat et unum, which Horace prescribes as requifite to make the whole picture beau tiful and perfect. |