Here's _Herbert's_[14] second, but equall, who hath retriv'd Poetry of late, and return'd it up to its primitive use; let it bound back to heaven gates, whence it came. Thinke yee ST. AUGUSTINE would have steyned his graver learning with a booke of Poetry, had he fancied its dearest end to be the vanity of love-sonnets and epithalamiums? No, no, he thought with this our Poet, that every foot in a high-borne verse, might helpe to measure the soule into that better world. Divine Poetry, I dare hold it in position, against SUAREZ on the subject, to be the language of the angels; it is the quintessence of phantasie and discourse center'd in Heaven; 'tis the very out-goings of the soule; 'tis what alone our Author is able to tell you, and that in his owne verse. It were prophane but to mention here in the Preface those under-headed Poets, retainers to seven shares and a halfe;[15] madrigall fellowes, whose onely businesse in verse, is to rime a poore six-penny soule, a suburb-sinner[16] into Hell:--May such arrogant pretenders to Poetry vanish, with their prodigious issue of tumorous[17] heats and flashes of their adulterate braines, and for ever after, may this our Poet fill up the better roome of man. Oh! when the generall arraignment of Poets shall be, to give an accompt of their higher soules, with what a triumphant brow shall our divine Poet sit above, and looke downe upon poore HOMER, VIRGIL, HORACE, CLAUDIAN, &c.? who had amongst them the ill lucke to talke out a great part of their gallant genius, upon bees, dung, froggs, and gnats, &c., and not as himself here, upon Scriptures, divine graces, martyrs and angels. Reader, we stile his Sacred Poems, Steps to the Temple, and aptly, for in the Temple of God, under His wing, he led his life, in St. Marie's Church neere St. Peter's Colledge: there he lodged under TERTULLIAN'S roofe of angels; there he made his nest more gladly than David's swallow neere the house of God, where like a primitive saint, he offered more prayers in the night than others usually offer in the day; there he penned these Poems, STEPS for happy soules to climbe heaven by. And those other of his pieces, intituled The Delights of the Muses, (though of a more humane mixture) are as sweet as they are innocent. The praises that follow, are but few of many that might be conferr'd on him: he was excellent in five languages (besides his mother tongue), vid. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, the two last whereof he had little helpe in, they were of his own acquisition. Amongst his other accomplishments in accademick (as well pious as harmlesse arts) he made his skill in Poetry, Musick, Drawing, Limming, Graving (exercises of his curious invention and sudden fancy) to be but his subservient recreations for vacant houres, not the grand businesse of his soule.