rent poem, I would say something to persuade him to take it as it is, or to excuse it for not being better.

The noble images and reflections, the profound reasonings upon human actions, and excellent precepts for the government of life, which are found in the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and other books commonly attributed to Solomon, affords subjects 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 verse in their original, is a dissertation 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 digest such observations and apothegms as most particularly tend to the proof of that great assertion, laid down in the beginning of the Ecclesiastes, All is vanity.

Upon the subject thus chosen, such various images present themselves to a writers's mind, that he must find it easier to judge what should be rejected, than what ought to be received. The difficulty lies in draw. ing and disposing, or (as the painters term it) in grouping such a multitude of different objects, preserving still the justice and conformity of style and colouring, the simplex duntaxat et unum which Horace prescribes as requisite 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, espe cially if the recital be long, I found it necessary to form some story, and give a kind of body to the Poem. Under what species it may be comprehended, whether Didascalic or Heroic, I leave to the judgment of the critics, desiring them to be favourable in their censure, and not solicitous what the Poem is called, provided it may be accepted.

The chief patronage or character in the Epic is al ways proportioned to the design of the work, to carry on the narration and the moral. Homer intended to shew us, in his Iliad, that dissentions amongst great men obstruct the execution of the noblest enterprizes, and tend to the ruin of a state or kingdom. His A chilles, therefore, is haughty and passionate, impatient of any restraint by laws, and arrogant in arms. In his Odysses, the same poet endeavours to explain that the hardest difficulties may be overcome by labour, and our fortune restored after the severest afflictions. Ulysses, therefore, is valiant, virtuous, and patient. Virgil's design was to tell us how, from a small colony established by the Trojans in Italy, the Roman empire rose, and from what ancient families Augustus (who was his prince and patron) descended. His hero, therefore, was to fight his way to the throne, still distinguished and protected by the favour

phers in the First book, and his Women and their Attendants in the Second: with these the Sacred history mention 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 Itime 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 without the same anachronism several of the finest parts of his Æneas must have been omitted. Our countryman, Milton, goes yet further: he takes up many of his material images some thousands of years after the fall of man; nor could he otherwise 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, terms 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 atone 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 theirextravagancies. 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 theimages 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. Philips, 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 Spencer 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 zeal 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 Nnum prematur in annum, yet have I by no means obeyed our poetical law-giver according to the spirit of the pre