POETICAL WORKS

MATTHEW PRIOR.

VOL. III.

CONTAINING HIS

SOLOMON, THREE BOOKS, NUT-BROWN MAID,

ALMA, THREE CANTOS, HENRY AND EMMA,

&c. &c. &c.

EDINBURG:

AT THE Apollo Press, BY THE MARTINS.

Anno 1777.

rent poem, I would say something to persuade him to take it as it is, or to excuse it for not being better.

The noble images and reflections, the profound reasonings upon human actions, and excellent precepts for the government of life, which are found in the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and other books commonly attributed to Solomon, affords subjects for finer poems in every kind than have, I think, as yet, appeared in the Greek, Latin, or any modern language: how far they were verse in their original, is a dissertation not to be entered into at present.

Out of this great treasure, which lies heaped up together in a confused magnificence, above all order, I had a mind to collect and digest such observations and apothegms as most particularly tend to the proof of that great assertion, laid down in the beginning of the Ecclesiastes, All is vanity.

Upon the subject thus chosen, such various images present themselves to a writers's mind, that he must find it easier to judge what should be rejected, than what ought to be received. The difficulty lies in draw. ing and disposing, or (as the painters term it) in grouping such a multitude of different objects, preserving still the justice and conformity of style and colouring, the simplex duntaxat et unum which Horace prescribes as requisite to make the whole picture beautiful and perfect.