1 What wonder is it then, that being born for a blessing to mankind, your supposed death in that engagement was so generally lamented through the nation? The concernment for it was as universal as the loss; and though the gratitude might be counterfeit in some, yet the tears of all were real where every man deplored his private part in that calamity, and even those who had not tasted of your favours, yet built so much on the fame of your beneficence, that they bemoaned the loss of their expectations. This brought the untimely death of your great father into fresh remembrance, as if the same decree had passed on two short successive generations of the virtuous; and I repeated to myself the same verses which I had formerly applied to him : Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra Esse sinent. But to the joy not only of all good men, but mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are still living, to enjoy the blessings and applause of all the good you have performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your long prosperity, and that your power of doing generous and charitable actions may be as extended as your will; which is by none more zealously desired than by Your GRACE'S Most humble, Most obliged, and Most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN. What wonder is it then, that being born for a blessing to mankind, your supposed death in that engagement was so generally lamented through the nation? The concernment for it was as universal as the loss; and though the gratitude might be counterfeit in some, yet the tears of all were real where every man deplored his private part in that calamity, and even those who had not tasted of your favours, yet built so much on the fame of your beneficence, that they bemoaned the loss of their expectations. This brought the untimely death of your great father into fresh remembrance, as if the same decree had passed on two short successive generations of the virtuous; and I repeated to myself the same verses which I had formerly applied to him: Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra Esse sinent. But to the joy not only of all good men, but mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are still living, to enjoy the blessings and applause of all the good you have performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your long prosperity, and that your power of doing generous and charitable actions may be as extended as your will; which is by none more zealously desired than by Your GRACE'S Most humble, Most obliged, and Most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN. PREFACE то THE FABLES.1 Ir is with a poet, as with a man who designs T to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; but, generally Ispeaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short in the expence he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So has it happened to me; I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dogkennel, never lived to finish the palace he had Nike contrived. From translating the First of Homer's ILIADS, (which I intended as an Essay to the whole work,) 3 The volume of Poems which our author entitled FABLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN, &c. was first published in folio, in January 1699-1700. This preface therefore, and the preceding Dedication, were his last compositions in prose. He died on the 1st of the following May. I proceeded to the translation of the twelfth book of Ovid's METAMORPHOSES, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning and ending, of the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not balk them. When I had compassed them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, which is the masterpiece of the whole METAMORPHOSES, that I enjoined myself the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, CINYRAS and MYRRHA, the good-natured story of BAUCIS and PHILEMON, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this I may say, without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spencer and Fairfax' both flourished in the reign 4 In a former work our author has spoken less respectfully of Sandys. See p. 282. 5 Very little is known of Edward Fairfax, the celebrated translator of GODFREY OF BULLOIGNE. He was |