ELEGIA DEDICATORIA, ad ILLUSTRISSIMAM Academiam CANTABRIGIENSEM. Oc tibi de Nato ditissima Mater egeno Tu Speculum poteris hic reperire tuum? Hunc mihi in Infantis supposuêre loco? Si mihi de doctâ licuisset pleniùs undâ Non ego degeneri dubitabilis ore redirem, Nec legeres Nomen fusa rubore meum. Nec pede adhuc firmo, nec firmo dente, negati Et vi victa cadunt; Arbor & ipsa gemit. Quas recreant Avium Pieridumq; chori! Ah mihi si vestræ reddat bona gaudia sedis, Ille quidem immerito, sed tibi gratus erat. Dignatum est totum verba referre nemus. Rumpitur ætatis turbidus ordo meæ. Quid mihi Sequanâ opus, Tamesisve aut Thybridis unda? At nos exemplis Fortuna instruxit opimis, Et versas fundo vidimus orbis opes. Tu quoque in hoc Terra tremuisti, Academia, Motu, (Nec frustrà) atq; ædes contremuêre tuæ. Contremuêre ipse pacate Palladis arces; Et timuit Fulmen Laurea sancta novum. Nos, tua progenies, pereamus; & ecce, perimus! Tinxit adorandus candida membra cruor. AT THE PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR. A return in it to be, that any Copy of it should my return lately into England, I met by great accident (for such account be extant any where so long, unless at his house who printed it) a Book entituled, The Iron Age, and published under my name, during the time of my absence. I wondred very much how one who could be so foolish to write so ill Verses, should yet be So Wise to set them forth as another Mans rather then his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the Bastard upon such a person, whose stock of Reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenance of his own numerous Legitimate Off-spring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the Author to put forth some of my Writings under his own name, rather then his own under mine: He had been in that a more pardonable Plagiary, and had done less wrong by Robbery, then he does by such a Bounty; for no body can be justified by the Imputation even of anothers Merit; and our own course Cloathes are like to become us better, then those of another mans, though never so rich but these, to say the truth, were so beggarly, that I my self was ashamed to wear them. It was in vain for me, that I avoided censure by the concealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus Executed in Effigie; and impossible it is for any good Name to be in safety, if the malice of Witches have the power to consume and destroy it in an Image of their own making. This indeed was so ill made, and so unlike, that I hope the Charm took no effect. So that I esteem my self less prejudiced by it, then by that which has been done to me since, almost in the same kinde, which is the publication of some things of mine without my consent or knowledge, and those so mangled and imperfect, that I could neither with honour acknowledge, nor with honesty quite disavow them. Of which sort, was a Comedy called The Guardian, printed in the year 1650. but made and acted before the Prince, in his passage through Cambridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy War; or rather neither made nor acted, but roughdrawn onely, and repeated; for the haste was so great, that it could neither be revised or perfected by the Author, nor learned without-Book by the Actors, nor set forth in any measure tolerably by the Officers of the College. After the Representation (which, I confess, was somewhat of the latest) I began to look it over, and changed it very much, striking out some whole parts, as that of the Poet and the Souldier; but I have lost the Copy, and dare not think it deserves the pains to writ it again, which makes me omit it in this publication, though there be some things in it which I am not ashamed of, taking the excuse of my age and small experience in humane conversation when I made it. But as it is, it is only the hasty first-sitting of a Picture, and therefore like to resemble me accordingly. From this which has hapned to my self, I began to reflect on the fortune of almost all Writers, and especially Poets, whose Works (commonly printed after their deaths) we finde stuffed out, either with counterfeit pieces, like false Money put in to fill up the Bag, though it adde nothing to the sum; or with such, which though of their own Coyn, they would have called in themselves, for the baseness of the Allay: whether this proceed from the indiscretion of their Friends, who think a vast heap of Stones or Rubbish a better Monument, then a little Tomb of Marble, or by the unworthy avarice of some Stationers, who are content to diminish the value of the Author, so they may encrease the price of the Book; and like Vintners with sophisticate mixtures, spoil the whole vessel of wine, to make it yield more profit. This has been the case with Shakespear, Fletcher, Johnson, and many others; part of whose Poems I should take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me; neither would I make any scruple to cut off from some the unnecessary young Suckers, and from others the old withered Branches; for a great Wit is no more tyed to live in a Vast Volume, then in a Gigantick |