Transcriber's Notes:
Credits: This e-text was scanned, proofed and edited with aglossary and translations from the Latin by Donal O' Danachair.(kodak_seaside@hotmail.com). The text is that of an editionpublished in London, 1805. This e-text is hereby placed in thepublic domain.
Spelling and punctuation: These are the same as in the book asfar as possible. The AE and OE digraphs have been transcribedas two letters. Greek words have been transliterated.
Notes: The notes are identified by letters in the text, thus: <a>.
In a few cases the note has no text reference: these are indicated <>.
Layout: the line numbers all end in col. 65. View this e-text in amonospaced font such as Courier and they will all line up in theright margin.
Latin: All translations are by the transcriber. In the notes, theyimmediately follow the Latin text in [square brackets].Translations of Latin phrases in the poem are in the glossary.Disclaimer: these translations are probably very inaccurate - Iam no great Latin scholar.
THE TIME OF THE LATE WARS
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BY SAMUEL BUTLER, ESQ.
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WITH
ANNOTATIONS
AND
AN INDEX
———
Poeta nascitur non fit, [poets are born, not made] is a sentenceof as great truth as antiquity; it being most certain, that all theacquired learning imaginable is insufficient to compleat a poet,without a natural genius and propensity to so noble and sublimean art. And we may, without offence, observe, that many verylearned men, who have been ambitious to be thought poets,have only rendered themselves obnoxious to that satyricalinspiration our Author wittily invokes:
Which made them, though it were in spight
Of nature and their stars, to write.
On the one side some who have had very little human learning,but were endued with a large share of natural wit and parts,have become the most celebrated (Shakespear, D'Avenant, &c.)poets of the age they lived in. But, as these last are, "Rarae avesin terris," so, when the muses have not disdained the assistancesof other arts and sciences, we are then blessed with those lastingmonuments of wit and learning, which may justly claim a kindof eternity upon earth. And our author, had his modestypermitted him, might, with Horace, have said,
Exegi monumentum aere perennius:
[I have raised a memorial more lasting than bronze]
Or, with Ovid,
Jamque opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis,
Nec poterit ferrum, nec edax abolere vetustas.
[For I have raised a work which neither the rage of Jupiter,
Nor fire, nor iron, nor consuming age can destroy.]
The Author of this celebrated Poem was of this his lastcomposition: for although he had not the happiness of anacademical education, as some affirm, if may be perceived,throughout his whole Poem, that he had read much, and wasvery well accomplished in the most useful parts of humanlearning.
Rapin (in his reflections)