a perfon, whose stock of reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenance of his own numerous legitimate off-fpring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the author to put forth fome of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under mine : he had been in that a more pardonable plagiary, and had done lefs wrong by robbery, than he does by fuch a bounty; for nobody can be juftified by the imputation even of another's merit; and our own coarse cloaths are like to become us better than those of another man, though never so rich but these, to say the truth, were fo beggarly, that I myself was ashamed to wear them. It was in vain for me, that I avoided cenfure by the concealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus executed in effigie; and impoffible it is for any good name to be in safety, if the malice of witches have the power to confume and deftroy it in an image of their own making. This indeed was fo

ill made, and fo unlike, that I hope the charm took no effect. So that I esteem myfelf lefs prejudiced by it, than by that which has been done to me fince, almost in the fame kind; which is, the publication of fome things of mine without my confentor knowledge, and those fo mangled and imperfect, that I could neither with honour acknowledge, nor with honefty quite difavow them.

Of which fort, was a comedy called The Guardian, printed in the year 1650; but made and acted before the Prince, in his paffage through Cambridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy war; or rather neither made nor acted, but rough-drawn only, and repeated; for the hafte was fo great, that it could neither be revised or perfected by the author, nor learned without-book by the actors, nor fet forth in any measure tolerably by the officers of the college. After the reprefentation (which, I confefs, was fomewhat VOL. I.

F

cf

of the lateft) I began to look it over, and changed it very much, ftriking out fome whole parts, as that of the poet and the foldier; but I have loft the сору, and dare not think it deferves the pains to write it again, which makes me omit it in this publication, though there be fome things in it which I am not ashamed of, taking the excuse of my age and small experience in human converfation when I made it. But, as it is, it is only the hasty first-fitting of a picture, and therefore like to resemble me accordingly.

FROM this which has happened to myfelf, I began to reflect on the fortune of almost all writers, and especially poets, whose works (commonly printed after their deaths) we find stuffed out, either with counterfeit pieces, like falfe money put to fill up the bag, though it add nothing to the fum; or with fuch, which, though of their own coin, they would have called in themselves, for the baseness of the allay :

in

whether

whether this proceed from the indifcretion of their friends, who think a vast heap of ftones or rubbish a better monument than a little tomb of marble, or by the unworthy avarice of fome ftationers, who are content to diminish the value of the author, fo they may increase the price of the book; and, like vintners, with fophifti cate mixtures, fpoil the whole veffel of wine, to make it yield more profit. This has been the cafe with SHAKESPEAR, FLETCHER, JONSON, and many others; part of whose poems I fhould take the boldness to prune and lop away, if the care of replanting them in print did belong to me [g]: neither would I make any scruple to cut off from fome the unneceffary young fuckers, and from others the old withered branches; for a great wit is no more tied to live in a vast volume, than in a gigantic body; on the contrary, it is commonly more vigorous, the lefs fpace it

[g] The editor's apology for the liberty taken in this edition, is here made by the author himself. animates.

F 2

1

animates. And, as STATIUS fays of little

TYDEUS [b],

Totos infufa per artus

Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus.

I am not ignorant, that, by saying this of others, I expose myself to some raillery, for not using the fame fevere discretion in my own cafe, where it concerns me nearer : But though I publish here more than in ftrict wisdom I ought to have done, yet I have fuppreft and caft away more than I publish; and, for the ease of myself and others, have loft, I believe too, more than both. And upon these confiderations I have been perfuaded to overcome all the juft repugnances of my own modefty, and to produce these poems to the light and view of the world; not as a thing that I approved of in itself, but as a lefs evil, which I chofe rather than to stay till it were done for me by fomebody else, either furreptitiously before, or avowedly af

[b] Stat. Theb. 1. i. 416.

ter,