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EDINBURG H:

Printed by CHURNSIDE and WILSON,

ROYAL BANK CLOSE.

M, DCC, LXXVII,

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PR E F A C E.

TH

HE Publick is here obliged with the Poetical Works of Mr DRYDEN, detach'd from the compofitions of inferior writers, with which most of them have been hitherto blended in the Mifcellanies*. It was thought but juftice to the productions of fo excellent a Poet, to fet them free at last from fo difadvantageous, if not unnatural, an union; which, like the cruelty of Mezentius în Virgil, was no less than a junction of living and dead bodies together. We fay this in refpect to numberless pieces in Mr Dryden's Mifcellanies, without derogating from that praife, which is justly due to many others among them. But, not to enter into the merit of Mr Dryden's fellow-undertakers † in that collection, or the motives which induced him to write in conjunction with others; we may venture to fay, it is now high time the partnership fhould be diffolved, and Mr Dryden left to ftand upon his own bottom. His credit, as a Poet, is out of all danger, tho' the withdrawing his fack may, probably, expofe many of his co-partners to the hazard of a poetical bankruptcy.

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Thofe publish'd by Mr DRYDEN himself in Six Parts, and others.

So he himself calls them. Pref. to the Mifcell.

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