Troy _rich and powerful, which so proudly stood,
That could for ten years spend such streams of Blood,
For Buildings, only her old Ruines shows,
For Riches, Tombs, which slaughter'd Sires enclose_,
Sparta, Mycenae, _were of_ Greece _the Flowers;
So_ Cecrops _City, and_ Amphion's _Towers:
Now glorious_ Sparta _lies upon the ground.
Lofty_ Mycenae _hardly to be found.
Of_ Oedipus _his_ Thebes _what now remains?
Or_ of Pandion's Athens, _but their Names?_

So also _Sylvester_ in his _Du Bartus_.

Thebes, Babel, Rome, _those proud Heaven-daring Wonders,
Lo under ground in Dust and Ashes lie,
For earthly Kingdoms even as men do die._

By this you may see that frail Paper is more durable than Brass or
Marble; and the Works of the Brain more lasting than that of the Hand;
so true is that old Verse,

Marmora _Maeonij_ vincunt Monumenta Libelli:
Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt.

_The Muses Works Stone-Monuments outlast.
'Tis Wit keeps Life, all else Death will down cast._

Now though it is the desire of all Writers to purchase to themselves
immortal Fame, yet is their Fate far different; some deserve Fame, and
have it; others neither have it, nor deserve it; some have it not
deserving, and others, though deserving, yet totally miss it, or have
it not equall to their Deserts: Thus have I known a well writ Poem,
after a double expence of Brain to bring it forth, and of Purse to
publish it to the World, condemned to the Drudgery of the _Chandler_ or
_Oyl-man_, or, which is worse, to light _Tobacco_. I have read in Dr.
_Fuller's Englands Worthies_, that Mr. _Nathanael Carpenter_, that
great Scholar for _Logick_, the _Mathematicks, Geography_, and
_Divinity_, setting forth a Book of _Opticks_, he found, to his great
grief, the Preface thereof in his Printers House, _Casing
Christmas-Pies_, and could never after from his scattered Notes recover
an Original thereof; thus (saith he) _Pearls_ are no _Pearls_, when
_Cocks_ or _Coxcombs_ find them.

There are two things which very much discourage Wit; ignorant Readers,
and want of _Mecaenasses_ to encourage their Endeavours. For the first,
I have read of an eminent Poet, who passing by a company of Bricklayers
at work, who were repeating some of his Verses, but in such a manner as
quite marred the Sence and Meaning of them; he snatching up a Hammer,
fell to breaking their Bricks; and being demanded the reason thereof,
he told them, that _