TO THE

READER.

P

OETA nafcitur non fit, is a fentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired learning ima

ginable is infufficient to compleat a poet, without a natural genius and propenlity to so noble and fublime an art. And we may without offence observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that fatyrical infpiration, our author wittily invokes: Which made them, tho' it were in spight Of nature and their stars, to write.

On the other fide, some who have had very little human learning, but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated * poets of the age they lived in. But, as these last are, Raræ aves in terris; so when the muses have not disdained the assistances of other arts and sciences, we are then blessed 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 faid,

* Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c.

B

Exegi Exegi monumentum ære perennius;

Or with OVID,

Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetuftas.

The author of this celebrated poem was of this last composition; for although he had not the happiness of an academical education, as fome affirm, it may be perceived, throughout his whole poem, that he had read much, and was very well accomplished in the most useful parts of human learning.

RAPIN (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, folid and universal; an understanding clear and diftinct; an imagination neat and pleasant; an elevation of foul, that depends not only on art or study, but is purely the gift of heaven, which must be sustained by a lively sense and vivacity; judgment to confider wisely of things, and vivacity for the beautiful expression of them, &c.

Now, how justly this character is due to our author, I leave to the impartial reader, and those of nicer judgments, who had the happiness to be more intimately acquainted with him.

The reputation of this incomparable poém is so thoroughly established in the world, that it would be superfluous, if not impertinent, to endeavour any panegyric upon it. King CHARLES II, whom the judicious part of mankind will readily acknowledge to be a fovereign judge of wit, was so great

an

an admirer of it, that he would often pleasantly quote it in his conversation: however, since most men have a curiosity to have some account of such anonymous authors, whose compositions have been eminent for wit or learning; I have been defired to oblige them with such informations, as I could receive from those who had the happins to be acquainted with him, and also to rectify the mistakes of the Oxford antiquary, in his Athenæ Oxonien fes, concerning him.

4

FA

THE

:

AUTHOR's

S

LIFE.

AMUEL BUTLER, the author of this excellent poem, was born in the parish of Strensham, in the county of Worcester, and baptized there the 13th of Feb. 1612. His father, who was of the fame name, was an honest country farmer, who had some small estate of his own, but rented a much greater of the Lord of the manor where he lived. However, perceiving in this son an early inclination to learning, he made a shift to have him educated in the free-school at Worcefter, under Mr. Henry BRIGHT; where having passed the usual time, and being become an excellent school-scholar, he went for some little time to Cambridge, but was never matriculated into that university, his father's abilities not being sufficient to be at the charge of an academical education; so that our author returned soon into his native country, and became Clerk to one Mr. Jefferys of Earls-Croom, an eminent Justice of the Peace for that county, with whom he lived some years, in an easy and no contemptible service. Here, by the indulgence of a kind master, he had fufficient leifure to apply himself to whatever learning his inclinations