AT my return lately into England, I met by great accident (for such I account it to be, that any Copy of it should be extant any where so long, unless at his house who print­ed it) a Book entituled, The Iron Age, and published un­der my name, during the time of my absence. I wondred very much how one who could be so foolish to write so ill Verses, should yet be so Wise to set them forth as another Mans rather then his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the Bastard upon such a person, whose stock of Reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenance of his own numerous Legitimate Off-spring of that kinde. It would have been much less in­jurious, if it had pleased the Author to put forth some of my Writings under his own name, rather then his own un­der mine: He had been in that a more pardonable Pla­giary, and had done less wrong by Robbery, then he does by such a Bounty; for no body can be justified by the Im­putation even of anothers Merit; and our own course Cloathes are like to become us better, then those of ano­ther mans, though never so rich▪ but these, to say the truth, were so beggarly, that I my self was ashamed to wear them. It was in vain for me, that I avoided censure by the con­cealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus Executed in Effigie; and impossible it is for any good Name to be in safety, if the malice of Witches have the power to consume and destroy it in an Image of their [Page] own making. This indeed was so ill made, and so un­like, that I hope the Charm took no effect. So that I esteem my self less prejudiced by it, then by that which has been done to me, since almost in the same kinde, which is, the publication of some things of mine without my consent or knowledge, and those so mangled and imperfect, that I could neither with honor acknowledge, nor with ho­nesty quite disavow them. Of which sort, was a Comedy called The Guardian, printed in the year, 1650. but made and acted before the Prince, in his passage through Cam­bridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy War; or rather neither made not acted, but rough-drawn onely, and repeated; for the hasie was so great, that it could neither be ravised or perfected by the Author, nor learnt without-Book by the Actors, nor set forth in any measure tolerably by the Officers of the College. After the Representation (which, I confess, was somewhat of the latest) I began to look it over, and changed it very much, striking out some whole parts, as that of the Poet and the Souldier; but I have lost the Copy, and dare not think it deserves the pains to write it again, which makes me o­mit it in this publication, though there be some things in it which I am not ashamed of, taking in the excuse of my age and small experience in humane conversation when I made it. But as it is, it is onely the hasty first-sit­ting of a Picture, and therefore like to resemble me ac­cordingly. From this which had hapned to my self, I be­gan to reflect upon the fortune of almost all Writers, and especially Poets, whose Works (commonly printed af­ter their deaths) we finde stuffed out, either with counter­feit pieces, like false Money put in to fill up the Bag, though it adde nothing to the sum; or with such, which though of their own Coyn, they would have called in themselves, for the baseness of the Allay: whether this proceed from the indiscretion of their Friends, who think a vast heap of Stones or Rubbish a better Monument, then a little Tomb of Marble, or by the unworthy avarice of some Stationers, who are content to diminish the value of the Author, so they may encrease the price of the Book; and like Vintners with sophisticate mixtures, spoil the whole vessel of wine, [Page] to make it yield more profit. This has been the case with Shakespear, Fletcher, Iohnson, and many others; part of whose Poems I should take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did be­long to me; neither would I make any scruple to cut off from some the unnecessary yong Suckars, and from others the old withered Branches; for a great Wit is no more tyed to live in a Vast Volume, then in a Gigantie Body; on the contrary, it is commonly more vigorous, the less space it animates. And as Statius says of little Tydaeus,

I am not ignorant, that by saying this of others, I expose my self to some Raillery, for not using the same severe discretion in my own case, where it concerns me nearer: But though I publish here, more then in strict wisdom I ought to have done, yet I have supprest and cast away more then I publish; and for the ease of my self and others, have lost, I believe too, more then both. And upon these considerations I have been perswaded to overcome all the just repugnances of my own modesty, and to produce these Poems to the light and view of the World; not as a thing that I approved of in it self, but as a lesser evil, which I chose rather then to stay till it were done for me by some body else, either surreptitiously before, or avowedly af­ter my death; and this will be the more excusable, when the Reader shall know in what respects he may look upon me as a Dead, or at least a Dying Person, and upon my Muse in this action, as appearing, like the Emperor Charls the Fifth, and assisting at her own Funeral.

For to make my self absolutely dead in a Poetical ca­pacity, my resolution at present, is never to exercise any more that faculty. It is, I confess, but seldom seen that the Poet dyes before the Man; for when we once fall in love with that bewitching Art, we do not use to court it as a Mistress, but marry it as a Wife, and take it for better or worse, as an Inseparable Companion of our whole life. But as the Mariages of Infants do but rarely prosper, so no [Page] man ought to wonder at the diminution or decay of my affection to Poesie; to which I had contracted my self so much under Age, and so much to my own prejudice in regard of those more profitable matches which I might have made among the richer Sciences. As for the Portion which this brings of Fame, it is an Estate (if it be any, for men are not oftner deceived in their hopes of Widows, then in their opinion of, Exegi monumentum are perennius) that hardly ever comes in whilst we are Living to enjoy it, but is a fantastical kind of Reversion to our own selves: nei­ther ought any man to envy Poets this posthumous and imaginary happiness, since they finde commonly so little in present, that it may be truly applyed to them, which S. Paul speaks of the first Christians, If their reward be in this life, they are of all men the most miserable.

And if in quiet and flourishing times they meet with so small encouragement, what are they to expect in rough and troubled ones? if wi [...] be such a Plant, that it scarce receives heat enough to preserve it alive even in the Sum­mer of our cold Clymate, how can it choose but wither in a long and a sharp winter? a warlike, various, and a tragi­cal age is best to write of, but worst to write in. And I may, though in a very unequal proportion, assume that to my self, which was spoken by Tully to a much better person, upon occasion of the Civil Wars and Revolu­tions in his time, Cic. de Clar. Ora­tor. Sed in te intuens, Brute, doleo, cujus in adolescentiam per medias laudes quasi [...]quadrigis vehentem transversa incurrit misera fortuna Reipublicae.

Neither is the present constitution of my Mind more proper then that of the Times for this exercise, or rather divertisement. There is nothing that requires so much serenity and chearfulness of Spirit▪ it must not be either overwhelmed with the cares of Life, or overcast with the Clouds of Melancholy and Sorrow, or shaken and disturb­ed with the storms of injurious Fortune; it must like the Halcyon, have fair weather to breed in. The Soul must be filled with bright and delightful Idaea's, when it under­takes to communicate delight to others; which is the main end of Poesie. One may see through the stile of Ovid de Trist. the humbled and dejected condition of Spirit with [Page] which he wrote it; there scarce remains any footsteps of that Genius, ‘Quem nec Iovis ira, nec ignes, &c.’ The cold of the Countrey had strucken through all his fa­culties, and benummed the very feet of his Verses. He is himself, methinks, like one of the Stories of his own Me­tamorphosis; and though there remain some weak resem­blances of Ovid at Rome, It is but as he says of Niobe,

The truth is, for a man to write well, it is necessary to be in good humor; neither is Wit less eclypsed with the unquietness of Mind, then Beauty with the Indisposition of Body. So that 'tis almost as hard a thing to be a Poet in despight of Fortune, as it is in despight of Nature. For my own part, neither my obligations to the Muses, nor ex­pectations from them are so great, as that I should suffer my self upon no considerations to be divorced; or that I should say like Horace, ‘Quisquis erit vitae, Hor. Sat 1. l 2. Ser. Seribam, color.’ I shall rather use his words in another place,

And this resolution of mine does the more befit me, be­cause my desire has been for some years past (though the execution has been accidentally diverted) and does stil ve­hemently continue, to retire my self to some of our American Plantations, not to seek for Gold, or inrich my self with the traffique of those parts (which is the end of [Page] most men that travel thither; so that of these Indies it is truer then it was of the former,

But to forsake this world for ever, with all the vanities and Vexations of it, and to bury my self in some obscure re­treat there (but not without the consolation of Letters and Philosophy) ‘Oblitús (que) meorum, obliviscendus & illis.’ As my former Author speaks too, who has inticed me here, I know not how, into the Pedantry of this heap of Latine Sentences. And I think Doctor Donnes Sun Dyal in a grave is not more useless and ridiculous then Poetry would be in that retirement. As this therefore is in a true sense a kind of Death to the Muses, and a real literal quitting of this World: So, methinks, I may make a just claim to the undoubted priviledge of Deceased Poets, which is to be read with more favor, then the Living; ‘Tanti est ut placeam tibi, Mart. Perire.’

Having been forced for my own necessary justification to trouble the Reader with this long Discourse of the Rea­sons why I trouble him also with all the rest of the Book, I shall onely add somewhat concerning the several parts of it, and some other pieces, which I have thought fit to reject in this publication: As first, all those which I wrote at School from the age of ten years, till after fifteen; for even so far backward there remain yet some traces of me in the little footsteps of a childe; which though they were then looked upon as commendable extravances in a Boy (men setting a value upon any kind of fruit before the usual season of it) yet I would be loth to be bound now to read them all over my self; and therefore should do ill to expect that patience from others. Besides, they have alrea­dy past through several Editions, which is a longer Life [Page] then uses to be enjoyed by Infants that are born before the ordinary terms. They had the good fortune then to find the world so indulgent (for considering the time of their production, who could be so hard-hearted to be se­vere?) that I scarce yet apprehend so much to be cen­sured for them, as for not having made advances after­wards proportionable to the speed of my setting out, and am obliged too in a maner by Discretion to conceal and suppress them, as Promises and Instruments under my own hand, whereby I stood engaged for more then I have been able to perform; in which truly, if I have failed, I have the real excuse of the honestest sort of Bankrupts, which is, to have been made Vnsolvable, not so much by their own negligence and ill-husbandry, as by some notorious ac­cidents, and publike disasters. In the next place, I have cast away all such pieces as I wrote during the time of the late troubles, with any relation to the differences that caused them; as among others, three Books of the Civil War it self, reaching as far as the first Battel of Newbury, where the succeeding misfortunes of the party stopt the work; for it is so uncustomary, as to become almost ri­diculous, to make Lawrels for the Conquered Now though in all Civil Dissentions, when they break into open hosti­lities, the War of the Pen is allowed to accompany that of the Sword, and every one is in a maner obliged with his Tongue, as well as Hand, to serve and assist the side which he engages in; yet when the event of battel, and the un­accountable Will of God has determined the controversie, and that we have submitted to the conditions of the Con­queror, we must lay down our Pens as well as Arms, we must march out of our Cause it self, and dismantle that, as well as our Towns and Castles, of all the Works and Forti­fications of Wit and Reason by which we defended it. We ought not sure, to begin our selves to revive the remem­brance of those times and actions for which we have re­ceived a General Amnestie, as a Favor from the Victor. The truth is, neither We, nor They, ought by the Represen­tation of Places and Images▪ to make a kind of Artificial Memory of those things wherein we are all bound to desire like Themistocles, the Art of Oblivion. The enmities of [Page] Fellow-Citizens should be, like that of Lovers, the Re­dintegration of their Amity. The Names of Party, and Titles of Division, which are sometimes in effect the whole quarrel, should be extinguished and forbidden in peace under the notion of Acts of Hostility. And I would have it accounted no less unlawful to rip up old wounds, then to give new ones; which has made me not onely ab­stain from printing any things of this kinde, but to burn the very copies, and inflict a severer punishment on them my self, then perhaps the most rigid Officer of State would have thought that they deserved.

As for the ensuing Book, it consists of four parts: The first is a Miscellanie of several Subjects, and some of them made when I was very young, which it is perhaps super­fluous to tell the Reader; I know not by what chance I have kept Copies of them; for they are but a very few in com­parison of those which I have lost, and I think they have no extraordinary virtue in them, to deserve more care in preservation, then was bestowed upon their Brethren; for which I am so little concerned, that I am ashamed of the arrogancy of the word, when I said, I had lost them.

The Second, is called, The Mistress, or Love-Verses; for so it is, that Poets are scarce thought Free-men of their Company, without paying some duties, and obliging them­selves to be true to Love. Sooner or later they must all pass through that Tryal, like some Mahumetan Monks, that are bound by their Order, once at least, in their life, to make a Pilgrimage to Meca, ‘In furias igném (que) ruunt; Amor omnibus idem.’ But we must not always make a judgement of their man­ners from their writings of this kind; as the Romanists un­charitably do of Beza, for a few lascivious Sonnets com­posed by him in his youth. It is not in this sense that Poesie is said to be a kind of Painting; it is not the Picture of the Poet, but of things and persons imagined by him. He [Page] may be in his own practice and disposition a Philoso­pher, nay a Stoick, and yet speak sometimes with the softness of an amorous Sappho. ‘Feret & rubus asper Amomum.’ He professes too much the use of Fables (though with­out the malice of deceiving) to have his testimony taken even against himself. Neither would I here be mis­understood, as if I affected so much gravity, as to be ashamed to be thought really in Love. On the contra­ry, I cannot have a good opinion of any man who is not at least capable of being so. But I speak it to excuse some expressions (if such there be) which may hap­pen to offend the severity of supercilious Readers; for much Excess is to be allowed in Love, and even more in Poetry; so we avoid the two unpardonable vices in both, which are Obscenity and Prophaneness, of which I am sure, if my words be ever guilty, they have ill­represented my thoughts and intentions. And if, not­withstanding all this, the lightness of the matter here displease any body; he may finde wherewithal to con­tent his more serious inclinations in the weight and height of the ensuing Arguments.

For as for the Pindarick Odes (which is the third part) I am in great doubt whether they wil be understood by most Readers; nay, even by very many who are well e­nough acquainted with the common Roads, and ordi­nary Tracks of Poesie. They either are, or at least were meant to be, of that kinde of Stile which Dion. Halicarnasseus calls, [...], and which he attributes to Alcaeus: The digressions are many, and sudden, and sometimes long, according to the fashion of all Lyriques, and of Pindar above all men living. The Figures are unusual and bold, even to Temeritie, and such as I durst not have to do withal in any other kinde of Poetry: The Numbers are various and irregular, and sometimes (especially some of the [Page] long ones) seem harsh and uncouth, if the just mea­sures and cadencies be not observed in the Pronunci­ation. So that almost all their Sweetness and Numerosity (which is to be found, if I mistake not, in the rough­est, if rightly repeated) lies in a maner wholly at the Mercy of the Reader. I have briefly described the na­ture of these Verses, in the Ode entituled, The Resurre­ction: And though the Liberty of them may incline a man to believe them easie to be composed, yet the un­dertaker will finde it otherwise.

I come now to the last Part, which is, Davideis, or an Heroical Poem of the Troubles of David; which I designed into Twelve Books; not for the Tribes sake, but after the Patern of our Master Virgil; and intend­ed to close all with that most Poetical and excellent Elegie of Davids upon the death of Saul and Ionathan: For I had no mind to carry him quite on to his Anoint­ing at Hebron, because it is the custom of Heroick Poets (as we see by the examples of Homer and Virgil whom we should do ill to forsake to imitate others) never to come to the full end of their Story; but one­ly so near, that every one may see it; as men common­ly play not out the game, when it is evident that they can win it, but lay down their Cards, and take up what they have won. This, I say, was the whole Designe, in which there are many noble and fertile Arguments behinde; as, The barbarous cruelty of Saul to the Priests at Nob, the several flights and escapes of David, with the maner of his living in the Wilderness, the Funeral of Samuel, the love of Abigal, the sacking of Ziglag, the loss and recovery of Davids wives from the Amalekites, the Witch of Endor, the war with the Philistims, and the Battel of Gilboa; all which I meant to interweave upon several occasions, with most of the illustrious Stories of the Old Testament, and to embellish with the [Page] most remarkable Antiquities of the Iews, and of other Nations before or at that Age. But I have had neither Leisure hitherto, nor have Appetite at present to finish the work, or so much as to revise that part which is done with that care which I resolved to bestow upon it, and which the Dignity of the Matter well deserves. For what worthier subject could have been chosen among all the Treasuries of past times, then the Life of this young Prince; who from so small beginnings, through such infinite troubles and oppositions, by such mira­culous virtues and excellencies, and with such incom­parable variety of wonderful actions and accidents, be­came the greatest Monarch that ever sat upon the most famous Throne of the whole Earth? whom should a Poet more justly seek to honor, then the highest person who ever honored his Profession? whom a Christian Poet, rather then the man after Gods own heart, and the man who had that sacred pre-eminence above all other Princes, to be the best and mightiest of that Royal Race from whence Christ himself, according to the flesh, disdained not to descend? When I consider this, and how many other bright and magnificent subjects of the like nature, the Holy Scripture affords, and Prof­fers, as it were, to Poesie, in the wise managing and illustrating whereof, the Glory of God Almighty might be joyned with the singular utility and noblest delight of Mankinde: It is not without grief and indignation that I behold that Divine Science employing all her in­exhaustable riches of Wit and Eloquence, either in the wicked and beggarly Flattery of great persons, or the unmanly Idolizing of Foolish Women, or the wretch­ed affectation of scurril Laughter, or at best on the confused antiquated Dreams of senseless Fables and Metamorphoses. Amongst all holy and consecrated things which the Devil ever stole and alienated from the service of the Deity; as Altars, Temples, Sacrifices, Prayers, and the like; there is none that he so univer­sally, and so long usurpt, as Poetry. It is time to re­cover it out of the Tyrants hands, and to restore it to [Page] the Kingdom of God, who is the Father of it. It is time to Baptize it in Iordan, for it will never become clean by bathing in the Waters of Damascus. There wants, methinks, but the Conversion of That, and the Iews, for the accomplishing of the Kingdom of Christ. And as men before their receiving of the Faith, do not without some carnal reluctancies, apprehend the bonds and fetters of it, but finde it afterwards to be the truest and greatest Liberty: It will fare no otherwise with this Art, after the Regeneration of it; it will meet with wonderful variety of new, more beautiful, and more delightful Objects; neither will it want Room, by being confined to Heaven. There is not so great a Lye to be found in any Poet, as the vulgar conceit of men, that Lying is Essential to good Poetry. Were there never so wholesome Nourishment to be had (but, alas, it breeds nothing but Diseases) out of these boasted Feasts of Love and Fables; yet, methinks, the unalterable con­tinuance of the Diet should make us Nauseate it: For it is almost impossible to serve up any new Dish of that kinde. They are all but the Cold-meats of the Antients, new-heated, and new set forth. I do not at all won­der that the old Poets made some rich crops out of these grounds; the heart of the Soil was not then wrought out with continual Tillage: But what can we expect now, who come a Gleaning, not after the first Reapers. but after the very Beggars? Besides, though those mad stories of the Gods and Heroes, seem in themselves so ri­diculous; yet they were then the whole Body (or rather Chaos) of the Theologie of those times. They were be­lieved by all but a few Philosophers, and perhaps some Atheists, and served to good purpose among the vul­gar, (as pitiful things as they are) in strengthening the authority of Law with the terrors of Conscience, and Ex­pectation of certain rewards, and unavoidable punish­ments. There was no other Religion, and therefore that was better then none at all. But to us who have no need of them, to us who deride their folly, and are wea­ried with their impertinencies▪ they ought to appear no [Page] better arguments for Verse, then those of their worthy Successors, the Knights Errant What can we imagine more proper for the ornaments of Wit or Learning in the story of Deucalion, then in that of Noah? why will not the actions of Sampson afford as plentiful matter as the Labors of Hercules? why is not Ieptha's Daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia? and the friendship of David and Ionathan more worthy celebration, then that of Theseus and Perithous? Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land, yield incomparably more Poetical variety, then the voyages of Vlysses or Aeneas? Are the obsolete threadbare tales of Thebes and Troy, half so stored with great, heroical and supernatural actions (since Verse will needs finde or make such) as the wars of Ioshua, of the Iudges, of David, and divers others? Can all the Transformati­ons of the Gods, give such copious hints to flourish and expatiate on, as the true Miracles of Christ, or of his Prophets, and Apostles? what do I instance in these few particulars? All the Books of the Bible are either al­ready most admirable, and exalted pieces of Poesie, or are the best Materials in the world for it. Yet, though they be in themselves so proper to be made use of for this purpose; None but a good Artist will know how to do it: neither must we think to cut and polish Dia­monds with so little pains and skill as we do Marble. For if any man design to compose a Sacred Poem, by onely turning a story of the Scripture, like Mr. Quar­le [...]'s, or some other godly matter, like Mr. Heywood of Angels, into Rhyme; He is so far from elevating of Poesie, that he onely abases Divinity. In brief, he who can write a prophane Poem well, may write a Di­vine one better; but he who can do that but ill, will do this much worse. The same fertility of Invention, the same wisdom of Disposition; the same Iudgement in observance of Decencies, the same lustre and vigor of Elocution; the same modesty and majestie of Number; briefly the same kinde of Habit, is required to both; only this latter allows better stuff, and therefore would [Page] look more deformedly, if ill drest in it. I am farre from assuming to my self to have fulfilled the duty of this weighty undertaking: But sure I am, that there is nothing yet in our Language (nor perhaps in any) that is in any degree answerable to the Idea that I con­ceive of it. And I shall be ambitious of no other fruit from this weak and imperfect attempt of mine, but the opening of a way to the courage and industry of some other persons, who may be better able to perform it throughly and succesfully.