Classic Poem

It was the glorious Maro that referred his legacies to the fire, and
though princes are seldom executors, yet there came a Cæsar to his
testament, as if the act of a poet could not be repealed but by a king.
I am not, Reader, Augustus vindex: here is no royal rescue, but here
is a Muse that deserves it. The Author had long ago condemned these
poems to obscurity, and the consumption of that further fate which
attends it. This censure gave them a gust of death, and they have partly
known that oblivion which our best labours must come to at last. I
present thee then not only with a book, but with a prey, and in this
kind the first recoveries from corruption. Here is a flame hath been
sometimes extinguished, thoughts that have been lost and forgot, but now
they break out again like the Platonic reminiscency. I have not the
Author's approbation to the fact, but I have law on my side, though
never a sword. I hold it no man's prerogative to fire his own house.
Thou seest how saucy I am grown, and it thou dost expect I should
commend what is published, I must tell thee, I cry no Seville oranges. I
will not say, Here is fine or cheap: that were an injury to the verse
itself, and to the effects it can produce. Read on, and thou wilt find
thy spirit engaged: not by the deserts of what we call tolerable, but by
the commands of a pen that is above it.