extile aspects and
influences are watched for, and applied to the actions of life, thereby
to make the scheme and good auguries of the birth pass into Fate, and a
success infallible.

My Lord, by a happy obliging intercession, and your own consequent
indulgence, I have now recourse to your Lordship, hoping I shall not
much displease by putting these twin poets into your hands. The minion
and vertical planet of the Roman lustre and bravery, was never better
pleased than when he had a whole constellation about him: not his
finishing five several wars to the promoting of his own interest, nor
particularly the prodigious success at Actium where he held in chase the
wealth, beauty and prowess of the East; not the triumphs and absolute
dominions which followed: all this gave him not half that serene pride
and satisfaction of spirit as when he retired himself to umpire the
different excellencies of his insipid friends, and to distribute laurels
among his poetic heroes. If now upon the authority of this and several
such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value
and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the
lineaments to the following pieces, I should then do myself a real
service, and atone in a great measure for the present insolence. But
best of all will it serve my defence and interest, to appeal to your
Lordship's own conceptions and image of genuine verse; with which so
just, so regular original, if these copies shall hold proportion and
resemblance, then am I advanced very far in your Lordship's pardon: the
rest will entirely be supplied me by your Lordship's goodness, and my
own awful zeal of being, my Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient,
most humbly devoted servant,

J. W.

TO THE READER.

The Nation of Poets above all Writers has ever challenged perpetuity of
name, or as they please by their charter of liberty to call it,
Immortality. Nor has the World much disputed their claim, either easily
resigning a patrimony in itself not very substantial; or, it may be, out
of despair to control the authority of inspiration and oracle. Howsoever
the price as now quarrelled for among the poets themselves is no such
rich bargain: it is only a vanishing interest in the lees and dregs of
Time, in the rear of those Fathers and Worthies in the art, who if they
know anything of the heats and fury of their suc