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If to be fad is to be wife;

-605

I do moft heartily despise
Whatever Socrates has faid,

Or Tully writ, or Wanley read.
Dear Drift, to fet our matters right,
Remove these papers from my fight;
Burn Mat's Def-cart', and Aristotle :
Here! Jonathan, your master's bottle.

* Mr. Prior's Secretary and Executor.

610

H

1

SOLOMON

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Ὁ Βίος γὰρ ὄνομ ̓ ἔχει, πόνος δ ̓ ἔργῳ πέλει.

EURIP.

Siquis Deus mihi largiatur, ut ex hac ætate repu "erascam, & in cunis vagiam, valde recufem.” CIC. de Senect.

The bewailing of man's miferies hath been elegantly " and copiously set forth by many in the writings as "well of Philofophers as Divines; and is both a "pleasant and a profitable contemplation."

BACON.

IT

PREFACE.

is hard for a man to speak of himself with any tolerable fatisfaction or fuccefs: he can be more pleafed in blaming himself, than in reading a fatire made on him by another and though he may juftly defire that a friend fhould praise 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 condescending too far, he may injure his own caufe, and become a kind of felo de fe; and, by pleading and asserting too boldly, he may displease the court that fits upon him: his apology may only heighten his accufation. I would avoid these extremes: and though, I grant, it would not be very civil to trouble the reader with a long preface, before he enters upon an indifferent poem; I would fay fomething to perfuade him to take it 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

than have, I think, as yet appeared in the Greek, Latin, or any modern language: how far they were verse in their original is a differtation not to be entered into at present.

Out of this great treasure, which lies heaped up together in a confused magnificence, above all order, I had a mind to collect and digeft fuch obfervations and apophthegms, as most particularly tend to the proof of that great affertion, laid down in the beginning of the Ecclefiaftes, ALL IS VANITY.

Upon the fubject thus chofen, fuch various images present themselves to a writer's mind, that he must 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 juftice and conformity of ftyle and colouring, the "fimplex duntaxat & unum," which Horace prescribes, as requifite' to make the whole picture beautiful and perfect.

As precept, however true in theory, or useful in practice, would be but dry and tedious in verse, especially if the recital be long; I found it neceffary to form fome ftory, and give a kind of body to the poem. Under what fpecies it may be comprehended, whether Didafcalic or Heroic, I leave to the judgement of the critics; defiring them to be favourable in their cenfure; and not folicitous what the poem is called, provided it may be accepted.

The

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