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TENOX LIBRARY

NEW YORK

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TO THE

READER.

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OETA nafcitur non fit, is a Sentence of as great Truth as Antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired Learning imaginable is infufficient to compleat a Poet, without a natural Genius and Propensity to fo noble and fublime an Art. And we may without Offence obferve, 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 Side, fome 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; fo when the Muses have not difdained the Affistances of other Arts and Sciences, we are then bleffed with those lasting Monuments of Wit and Learning, which may justly claim a kind of Eternity upon Earth. And our Author, had his Modefty permitted him, might with HORACE have faid,

* Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c.
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