PREFACE.
With what scorn would he look down on such miserable Translators, who make Doggrel of his Latine, mistake his meaning, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own? He is fix'd as a Land-Mark to set out the bounds of Poetry,
———Saxum, antiquum ingens
Limes agro positus litem ut discerneret arvis:
But other Arms than theirs, and other Sinews are requir'd, to raise the weight of such an Author; and when they would toss him against their Enemies,
Genua labant, gelidus concrevit frigore sanguis,
Tum lapis ipse, viri vacuum per inane volutus
Nec spatium evasit totum, nec pertulit ictum.
For my part, I would wish no other revenge, either for my self or the rest of the Poets, from this Rhyming Judge of the Twelve-penny Gallery, this Legitimate Son of Sternhold, than that he would subscribe his Name to his censure, or (not to tax him beyond his learning) set his Mark: for shou'd he own himself publickly, and come from behind the Lyons Skin, they whom he condemns wou'd be thankful to him, they whom he praises wou'd chuse to be condemned; and the Magistrates whom he has elected, wou'd modestly withdraw from their employment, to avoid the scandal of his nomination. The sharpness of his Satyr, next to himself, falls most heavily on his Friends, and they ought never to forgive him for commending them perpetually the wrong way, and sometimes by contraries. If he have a Friend whose hastiness in writing is his greatest fault, Horace wou'd have taught him to have minc'd the matter, and to have call'd it readiness of thought, and a flowing fancy; for friendship will allow a man to Christen an imperfection by the name of some neighbour virtue:
Vellem in amicitiâ sic erraremus; & isti
Errori, nomen virtus posuisset honestum.
But he would never have allow'd him to have call'd a slow man hasty, or a hasty Writer a slow Drudge, as Juvenal explains it:
———Canibus pigris, scabieq; vetustâ
Levibus, & siccæ lambentibus ora lucernæ
Nomen erit, Pardus, Tygris, Leo; si quid adhuc est,
Quod fremit in terris violentius.
Yet Lucretius laughs at a foolish Lover, even for excusing the Imperfections of his Mistress:
