all numbers of gratitude,

My honoured Lord,
Your most affectionate, humblest Servant,
Vaughan.
Newton by Usk this 17 of Decemb. 1647.

THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.

It was the glorious Maro that referred his legacies to the fire, and
though princes are seldom executors, yet there came a Caesar to his
testament, as if the act of a poet could not be repealed but by a king.
I am not, Reader, _Augustus vindex_: here is no royal rescue, but here
is a Muse that deserves it. The Author had long ago condemned these
poems to obscurity, and the consumption of that further fate which
attends it. This censure gave them a gust of death, and they have partly
known that oblivion which our best labours must come to at last. I
present thee then not only with a book, but with a prey, and in this
kind the first recoveries from corruption. Here is a flame hath been
sometimes extinguished, thoughts that have been lost and forgot, but now
they break out again like the Platonic reminiscency. I have not the
Author's approbation to the fact, but I have law on my side, though
never a sword. I hold it no man's prerogative to fire his own house.
Thou seest how saucy I am grown, and it thou dost expect I should
commend what is published, I must tell thee, I cry no Seville oranges. I
will not say, Here is fine or cheap: that were an injury to the verse
itself, and to the effects it can produce. Read on, and thou wilt find
thy spirit engaged: not by the deserts of what we call tolerable, but by
the commands of a pen that is above it.

UPON THE MOST INGENIOUS PAIR OF TWINS,
EUGENIUS PHILALETHES, AND THE AUTHOR OF THESE POEMS.

What planet rul'd your birth? what witty star?
That you so like in souls as bodies are!
So like in both, that you seem born to free
The starry art from vulgar calumny.
My doubts are solv'd, from hence my faith begins,
Not only your faces but your wits are twins.

When this bright Gemini shall from Earth ascend,
They will new light to dull-ey'd mankind lend,
Teach the star-gazers, and delight their eyes,
Being fix'd a constellation in the skies.

T. Powell, Oxoniensis.

TO MY FRIEND THE AUTHOR UPON THESE HIS POEMS.

I call'd it once my sloth: in such an age
So many volumes deep, I not a page?
But I recant, and vow 'twas thrif