an old author observes be true, that the aim of orators is victory, of hiftorians truth, and of poets admiration He had reason therefore to indulge those faults in his book, whereby it might be reconciled to fome, and commended to others.

The printer alfo, he thought, would fare the worfe if thofe faults were amended, for we fee maimed ftatues fell better than whole ones; and clipped and washed money goes about, when the entire and weighty lies hoarded up.

Thefe are the reafons which, for above twelve years paft, he has oppofed to our requeft; to which it was replied, that as it would be too late to recall that which had fo long been made publick, fo might it find excufe from his youth, the feafon it was produced in: and for what had been done fince, and now added, if it commend not his poetry, it might his philofophy, which teaches him to cheerfully to bear fo great a calamity as the lofs of the best part of his fortune, torn from him in prifon, (in which, and in banishment, the best portion of his life hath also been spent) that he can ftill fing under the burden, not unlike that Roman*,

Quem demifere Philippi

Deciis humilem pennis, inopemque paterni
Et laris et fundi.

Whofe fpreading wings the Civil war had clipp'd,
And him of his old patrimony stripp'd,

Horace, lib. ii. ep. 2.

Who yet not long after could say,

Mufis amicus, triftitiam et metus

Tradam protervis in mare Creticum
Portare ventis.

They that acquainted with the Muses be,
Send care and forrow by the winds to fea.

Lib. i. ode 26.

Not fo much moved with these reasons of ours, (or pleafed with our rhymes) as wearied with our importunity, he has at last given us leave to affure the reader that the Poems which have been fo long and fo ill fet forth under his name, are here to be found as he first writ them; as alfo to add some others which have fince been composed by him; and though his advice to the contrary might have difcouraged us, yet obferving how often they have been reprinted, what price they have borne, and how earnestly they have been always inquired after, but especially of late, (making good that of Horace,

-Meliora dies, ut vina, poemata reddit.

Lib. ii ep. I.

"fome verfes being, like fome wines, recommended "to our taste by time and age") we have adventured npon this new and well-corrected edition, which, for our own fakes as well as thine, we hope will fuc ceed better than he apprehended.

Vivitur ingenio, cætera mortis crunt.

ALBINOVANUS.

Preface to the Second Part of Mr. Waller's Poems,printed in the year 1690.

THE reader needs be told no more in commendation of thefe Poems than that they are Mr. Waller's, a name that carries every thing in it that is either great or graceful in poetry. He was indeed the parent of English verfe, and the first that shewed us our tongue had beauty and numbers in it. Our language owes more to him than the French does to Cardinal Richelieu and the whole Academy. A poet cannot think of him without being in the fame rapture Lucretius is in when Epicurus comes in his way.

Tu pater, et rerum inventor; tu patria nobis
Suppeditas præcepta: tuifque ex, Inclute! chartis,
Floriferis ut apes in faltibus omnia libant,
Omnia nos itidem depafcimur aurea dicta;
Aurea perpetua femper digniffiena vita!

Lib. iii. ver. 9.

The tongue came into his hands like a rough diamond: he polished it first, and to that degree, that all artists fince him have admired the workmanship, without pretending to mend it Suckling and Carew, I must confefs, wrote fome few things fmoothly enough; but as all they did in this kind was not very confiderable, fo it was a little later than the earliest pieces of Mr Waller. He undoubtedly stands first in the list of refiners, and, for ought I know, last too: for I question whether in Charles II 's reign English did not come to its full perfection, and whether it has

not had its Auguftan age as well as the Latin. It feems to be already mixed with foreign languages as far as its purity will bear; and, as chymifts fay of their menftruums, to be quite fated with the infufion. But pofterity will beft judge of this. In the meantime, it is a furprifing reflection, that between what Spenfer wrote laft, and Waller first, there fhould not be much above twenty years distance; and yet the one's language, like the money of that time, is as current now as ever; whilft the other's words are like old coins, one must go to an antiquary to underftand their true meaning and value. Such advances may a great genius make when it undertakes any thing in earnest.

Some painters will hit the chief lines and mafterftrokes of a face fo truly, that thro' all the differences of age the picture fhall ftill bear a resemblance. This art was Mr. Waller's: he fought out, in this flowing tongue of ours, what parts would laft, and be of ftanding use and ornament; and this he did fo fuccessfully, that his language is now as fresh as it was at first fetting out. Were we to judge barely by the wording, we could not know what was wrote at twenty, and what at fourscore. He complains, indeed, of a tide of words that comes in upon the English poet, and overflows whatever he builds; but this was lefs his cafe than any man's that ever wrote; and the mifchief of it is, this very complaint will last long

enough to confute itself; for though English be mouldering flone, as he tells us there, yet he has certainly picked the best out of a bad quarry

We are no lefs beholden to him for the new turn of verfe which he brought in, and the improvement he made in our numbers Before his time men rhymed indeed, and that was all: as for the harmony of measure, and that dance of words which good ears are fo much pleas'd with, they knew nothing of it. Their poetry then was made up almost entirely of monofyllables, which, when they come together in any cluster, are certainly the most harsh, untuneable things in the world. If any man doubts of this, let him read ten lines in Donne, and he will be quickly convinced. Befides, their verfes ran all into one another, and hung together, throughout a whole copy, like the hooked atoms that compofe a body in Des Carres. There was no diftinction of parts, no regular ftops, nothing for the ear to rest upon; but as foon as the copy began, down it went like a larum, inceffantly, and the reader was fure to be out of breath before he got to the end of it: fo that really verfe. in those days, was but downright profe tacked with rhymes Mr Waller removed all these faults, brought in more polyfyllables, and fmoother measures, bound up his thoughts better, and in a cadence more agreeable to the nature of the verfe he wrote in; fo that wherever the natural stops of that were, he contri