The whole poem is a soliloquy: Solomon is the person that speaks: he is at once the hero and the author; but he tells us very often what others say to him. Those chiefly introduced are his Rabbies and Philosophers in the first book, and his women and their attendants in the second: with these the sacred history mentions him to have conversed, as likewise with the angel brought down, in the third book, to help him out of his difficulties, or at least to teach him how to overcome them. Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus,

I presume this poetical liberty may be very justly allowed me on so solemn an occasion.

In my description I have endeavoured to keep to the notions and manners of the Jewish nation at the time when Solomon lived; and where I allude to the customs of the Greeks, I believe I may be justified by the strictest chronology, though a poet is not obliged to the rules that confine an historian. Virgil has anticipated two hundred years, or the Trojan hero and Carthaginian queen could not have been brought together; and withort the same anachronism several of the finest parts of his eis must have been omitted. Our countryman Milton gos yet further: he takes up many of his material images some thousands of years after the fall of man; nor could he ctherwise have written, or we read, one of the sublimest pieces of invention that was ever yet produced. This likewise takes off the objection that some names of countries, erms of art, and notions in natural philosophy, are otherwise expressed than can be warranted by the geography or astronomy of Solomon's time. Poets are allowed the same liberty in their descriptions and comparisons, as painters in their draperies and ornaments: their personages may be dressed not exactly in the same habits which they wore, but in such as make them appear most graceful. In this case probability must at one for the want of truth. This liberty has, indeed, been abused by eminent masters in either science. Raphael and Tasso have shewed their discretion, where Paul Veronese and Ariosto are to answer for their

extravagancies. It is the excess, not the thing itself, that is blameable.

I would say one word of the measure in which this and most poems of the age are written. Heroic, with continued rhyme, as Donne and his contemporaries used it, carrying the sense of one verse most commonly into another, was found too dissolute and wild, and came very often too near prose. As Davenant and Waller corrected, and Dryden perfected it, it is too confined: it cuts off the sense at the end of every first line, which must always rhyme to the next following, and consequently produces too frequent an identity in the sound, and brings every couplet to the point of an epigram. It is indeed, too broken and weak to convey the sentiments and represent the images proper for epic; and as it tires the writer while he composes, it must do the same to the reader while he repeats, especially in a poem of any considerable length.

If striking out into blank verse, as Milton did (and in this kind Mr. Phillips, had he lived, would have excelled) or running the thought into alternate and stanza, which allows a greater variety, and still preserves the dignity of the verse, as Spenser and Fairfax have done: if either of these, I say, be a proper remedy for my poetical complaint, or if any other may be found, I dare not determine: I am only inquiring in order to be better informed, without presuming to direct the judgment of others: and, while I am speaking of the verse itself, I give all just praise to many of my friends now living, who have in epic carried the harmony of their numbers as far as the nature of this measure will permit: but, once more, he that writes in rhymes dances in fetters; and as his chain is more extended, he may certainly take larger steps.

I need make no apology for the short digressive panegyric upon Great Britain in the first book: I am glad to have it observed, that there appears throughout all my verses a seal for the honour of my country; and I had rather be thought a

good Englishman than the best poet or greatest scholar that ever

wrote.

And now, as to the publishing of this piece; though I have in a literal sense observed Horace's Nonum premater in annum, yet have I by no means obeyed our poetical lawgiver, according to the spirit of the precept. The poem has, indeed, been written and laid aside much longer than the term prescribed; but, in the mean time, I had little leisure, and less inclination, to revise or print it. The frequent interruptions I have met with in my private studies, and great variety of public life in which I have been employed, my thoughts (such as they are) having generally been expressed in foreign language, and even formed by a habitude-very different from what the beauty and elegance of English poetry requires; all these, and some other circumstances, which we had as good pass by at present, do justly contribute to make my excuse in this behalf very plausi ble. Far, indeed, from designing to print, I had locked up these papers in my 'scritoire, there to lie in peace till my executors might have taken them out. What altered this design, or how my 'scritoire came to be unlocked before my coffin was nailed, is the question. The true reason I take to be the best; many of my friends of the first quality, finest learning, and greatest understanding, have wrested the key from my hands by a very kind and irresistible violence; and poem is published, not without my consent indeed, but a little against my opinion, and with an implicit submission to the partiality of their judgment. As I give up here the trui's of many of my vacant hours to their amusement and pleasure, I shall always think myself happy if I may dedicate my most serious endeavours to their interest and service and I am proud to finish this preface by saying, that the violence of many enemies, whom I never justly offended, is abundantly recompensed by the goodness of more friends, who.. I can never sufficiently oblige: and if I here assume the liberty of mentioning my Lord Harley and Lord Bathurst as the authors of this amicable confederacy, among all those whose names do

the

me great honour in the beginning of my book,* these two only ought to be angry with me; for I disobey their positive order, whilst I make even this small acknowledgment of their particu

lar kindness.

The folio edition of 1718, to which is prefixed a most numerous list of honourable and celebrated names as subscribers.

KNOWLEDGE.

BOOK I.

Texts chiefly alluded to in this Book.

THE words of the Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem, Eccles. chap. i. ver. 1.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity, ver. 2.

I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath had great experience of wisdom and knowledge, ver. 16. He spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake als of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes, Kings, chap. iv. ver. 33.

and God doeth

I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be for ever ; nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it it, that men should fear before him, Eccles.

14.

chap. iii. ver.

He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart; so that no man càn find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end, Eccles. chap. iii. ver. 11.

or in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth know ledge increaseth sorrow, chap.i. ver. 18.

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end: and much study is a weariness of the flesh, chap. xii. ver. 12.