TO THE READER. POETA nafcitur, non fit, is a fentence of as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all the acquired learning imaginable is infufficient to complete a Poet, without a natural genius and propenfity to fo noble and fublime an art. And we may, without of fence, observe, that many very learned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets, have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that fatirical inspiration our Author wittily, invokes, Which made them, tho' it were in spite On the other fide, fome who have had very little human learning *, but were endued with a large fhare of natural wit and parts, have become the most celebrated poets of the age they lived in. But as thefe laft are raræ avis in terris; fo when the Mufes have not difdained the affinances of other arts and sciences, we are A. 2 Shakespeare, D'Avenant, a |