[continued from previous message]

...Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant WORTHyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not
incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this WORTH, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath
published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious
oppressions. Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others?
What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their
Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the
greatness which he affected was built upon true WORTH; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.

*********************************
Cynthias Revels, Jonson
Amorphus/Oxford:

He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd. He walks
most commonly with a Clove or Pick-tooth in his
Mouth, he is the very mint of Complement, all his Be-
haviours are printed, his Face is another Volume of
Essayes; and his Beard an Aristrachus. He speaks all
Cream skim'd, and more affected than a dozen of wait-
ing Women. He is his own Promoter in every place.
The Wife of the Ordinary gives him his Diet to main-
tain her Table in discourse, which (indeed) is a meer
Tyranny over the other Guests, for he will usurp all
the talk: *Ten Constables are not so tedious*.

*******************************
Sidney, Defence of Poetry

But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither RIGHT tragedies nor RIGHT comedies (note - two left arms or the Droeshout), mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and
shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither DECENCY nor DISCRETION; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a
thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes
and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed NO RIGHT COMEDY in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but SCURRILITY, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing
else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.

But OUR COMEDIANS think there is no delight without laughter, which is very WRONG; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay,
rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most DISPROPORTIONED to ourselves and
nature.

**********************************
Sidney, Defense
But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully ABUSED; which, like an unMANNERly daughter, showing a bad education,
causeth her mother Poesy`s HONESTY to be called in question.

**********************************

Ben Jonson's Poems By Wesley Trimpi


...Jonson’s fundamental objection to the sonnet…is that it leads one to say more than one has to say in order to satisfy the form. The poet is obliged to use rhetorical figures, and his intentions becomes contradictory to that of the plain style. As
the rhetorical figures and the form become more important, the range of subject matter decreases. The poet who seeks the grace and charm of the middle style will do well to utilize that grace which, according to Demetrius, “ may reside in the subject
matter, if it is the gardens of the Nymphs, marriage-lays, love-stories” (On Style, 132), or “Petrarch’s long-deceased woes.” The freedom of the plain style to treat of any subject depends on it primary purpose, which is to tell the truth. Since
the officium of the middle style is to delight (delectare), many subjects must be excluded, and the emphasis is no longer on content but on expression.

The conventional adjectives for rhetorical ornateness in poetry were “sugred” or “honied,” and each could be used as a equivalent for Ciceronian rhetoric itself. The term “sugred” was most often applied to sonnets, such as in the famous
comment of Francis Meres on “the mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends.” Among the literary genres the epigram was often regarded as a corrective for the
trite diffuseness of the sonnet. The salt of incisive wit was needed to preserve the poem, which otherwise might cloy and dissolve like candy. Sir John Harington contrasts the two sets of conventions in his epigram called “Comparison of the Sonnet, and
the Epigram”:

Once, by mishap, two Poets fell a-squaring,
The Sonnet, and our Epigram comparing;
And Faustus, having long demur’d upon it,
Yet, at the last, gave sentence for the Sonnet.
Now, for such censure, this his chiefe defence is,
Their sugred taste best likes his likresse senses.
Well, though I grant Sugar may please the taste,
Tet let my verse have salt enough to make it last.

In terms of the poetic conventions the rhetorical controversy between Ciceronianism and Senecanism became one between a MELLIFLUOUS and a SINUOUS style.

******************************
HONEY-TONGUED Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them and none other;
Their rosy-tinted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:
Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus, charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her:
Romeo, Richard; more whose names I know not,
Their SUGARED tongues, and power attractive beauty
Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,
For thousands vow to them subjective duty :
They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare HET them ,
Go, woo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.

Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion.
John Weever. 1599. Fourth Weeke, Epig. 22.

*****************************
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild. - Milton

*****************************
Thomas Bancroft (1639), Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs


118. To Shakespeare.

Thy Muses SUGRED DAINTIES seeme to us
Like the fam’d apples of old Tantalus :
For we (admiring) see and heare thy straines,
But none I see or heare those sweets attaines.

********************************

Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning

There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those things we do esteem VAIN which are either false or frivolous, those which either have no truth or no use; and those persons we esteem vain which are
either credulous or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: so that in reason as well as in experience there fall out to be these three distempers (as I may term them) of learning--the first, fantastical learning; the second, contentious
learning; and the last, delicate learning; vain imaginations, vain altercations, and vain affectations; and with the last I will begin. Martin Luther, conducted, no doubt, by a higher Providence, but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had
undertaken against the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the Church, and finding his own solitude, being in nowise aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his succours to make
a party against the present time. So that the ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved. This, by consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite travail in
the languages original, wherein those authors did write, for the better understanding of those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew, again, a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an
admiration of that kind of writing, which was much furthered and precipitated by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those primitive but seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary part, and whose
writings were altogether in a differing style and form; taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may call it) lawfulness of the
phrase or word. And again, because the great labour then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say, Execrabilis ista turba, quae non novit legem) [the wretched crowd that has not know the law], for the winning and persuading of them,
there grew of necessity in chief price and request eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access into the capacity of the vulgar sort; so that these four causes concurring--the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the
schoolmen, the exact study of languages, and the efficacy of preaching--did bring in an affectionate study of eloquence and copy of speech, which then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess; for men began to hunt more after words than matter--
more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject,
soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius, the Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did STURMIUS spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero the Orator and Hermogenes the
Rhetorician, besides his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the like. Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young men that were studious unto that delicate and
polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo, Decem annos consuumpsi in legendo Cicerone [I have spent ten years in reading Cicero(ne); and the echo answered in Greek, One, Asine. Then grew the learning of the
schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent of those times was rather towards copy than weight.

Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter, whereof though I have represented an example of late times, yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus[more or less] in all timeAnd how is it possible but
this should have an operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a patent or limited book, which though it hath large flourishes, yet it is but a letter? It seems to me that
Pygmalion's frenzy is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity; for words are but the images of matter, and except they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love with a picture.

But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato
also in some degree; and hereof likewise there is great use, for surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some hindrance because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, and quencheth the desire of
further search before we come to a just period. But then if a man be to have any use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which
write in that manner. But the excess of this is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain, Nil sacri es [Thou art no Divinity]; so there is none of Hercules' followers in
learning--that is, the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth--but will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed capable of no divineness. And thus much of the first disease or distemper of learning.

The second, which followeth, is in nature worse than the former, for as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain words; wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was not only proper for
those times, but prophetical for the times following, and not only respective* to divinity but extensive[5] to all knowledge: Devita profanas vocum novitates, et oppositiones falsi nominis scientiae.[Avoid profane novelties of terms and the oppositions
of what is falsely called knowledge." I Tim. 6.20] For he assigneth two marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the strictness of positions,[7] which of necessity doth induce
oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as many substances in nature which are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms, so it is the property of good and sound knowledge to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile, idle,
unwholesome, and (as I may term them) vermiculate questions, which have indeed a kind of quickness* and life of spirit, but no soundness of matter or goodness of quality. This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who
having sharp and strong wits and abundance of leisure and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and
knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter,
which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited thereby, but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the
fineness of thread and work but of no substance or profit.

********************************

Jennifer Richards

HOW CASTIGLIONE READ CICERO

...The questione della lingua is focused on a particular question: should the courtier imitate the literary greats, borrowing from them words already endowed with authority, or should he follow the promptings of his own talents, and employ the language
of his contemporaries? [24] Notably, it covers ground already familiar to us from the earlier discussion of nobility: can courtly gracefulness be learned, or is it a property natural to the nobly born? For this reason, it contributes to our understanding
of the relationship between art and nature so central to the nobility debate, and it also further aims to inculcate in us a practice of reading which is itself ennobling.



Throughout the discussion, Canossa is committed to the idea that all we need is talent and a willingness to adopt the contemporary linguistic idiom, but he needs to defend his position against an interlocutor, Fregoso, who champions the need for
imitation. Castiglione seems to set up an argument in utramque partem which enables us to see both sides of the debate, and to choose the more persuasive one. However, the dialogue does not quite work like that. When Fregoso objects that Canossa's advice
encourages the courtier to reproduce the solecisms of ignorant speakers, our speaker produces this confusing explanation: "Good usage in speech is born with men who have native wit, and, with teaching and experience, acquire good judgement, and in
accordance with it, agree upon apt words whose quality they know from a certain natural judgement rather than from art or any rule" (87/68). [25]



This sentence seems to epitomise Canossa's disdainful refusal to teach us; it looks like a deliberate obfuscation. However, he is in fact following the example set by the dissimulating Antonius, and is showing, not telling us, the artificial causes of "
natural" rhetorical skill (78-80/63-64). The questione della lingua is difficult to follow not just because it is meandering, contradictory and ambiguous, but because it offers a partial account of De oratore while relying on our knowledge of that text. [
26]


************************************
Straying beyond Jonson's 'fit bounds':

Jonson, on Shakespeare

He was (indeed) honest, and of
an open, and free nature: had an excellent
fancy; brave notions, and gentle expressions:
wherein he flowed with that facility, that
sometime it was necessary he should be
STOP'D: sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said
of Haterius. His wit was in his own power;
would the RULE of it had been so too."

*********************************
Ruling/Restraining Shakespeare's Quill:

From 'To the Deceased Author of these Poems' (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne

... For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with supplied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)

******************************

John Oldham on Jonson



III.
Let dull, and ignorant Pretenders Art condemn
(Those only Foes to Art, and Art to them)
The meer Fanaticks, and Enthusiasts in Poetry
(For Schismaticks in that, as in Religion be)
Who make't all Revelation, Trance, and Dream,
Let them despise her Laws, and think
That Rules and Forms the Spirit stint:
Thine was no mad, unruly Frenzy of the brain,
Which justly might deserve the Chain,
'Twas brisk, and mettled, but a manag'd Rage,
Sprightly as vig'rous Youth, and cool as temp'rate Age:
Free, like thy Will, it did all Force disdain,
But suffer'd Reason's loose, and easie rein,
By that it suffer'd to be led,
Which did not curb Poetick liberty, but guide:
Fancy, that wild and haggard Faculty,
Untam'd in most, and let at random fly,
Was wisely govern'd, and reclaim'd by thee,
Restraint, and Discipline was made endure,
And by thy calm, and milder Judgment brought to lure;
Yet when 'twas at some nobler Quarry sent,
With bold, and tow'ring wings it upward went,
Not lessen'd at the greatest height,
Not turn'd by the most giddy flights of dazling Wit.
(snip)

V.
Sober, and grave was still the Garb thy Muse put on,
No tawdry careless slattern Dress,
Nor starch'd, and formal with Affectedness,
Nor the cast Mode, and Fashion of the Court, and Town;
But neat, agreeable, and janty 'twas,
Well-fitted, it sate close in every place,
And all became with an uncommon Air, and Grace:
Rich, costly and substantial was the stuff,
Not barely smooth, nor yet too coarsly rough:
No refuse, ill-patch'd Shreds o'th Schools,
The motly wear of read, and learned Fools,
No French Commodity which now so much does take,
And our own better Manufacture spoil,
Nor was it ought of forein Soil;
But Staple all, and all of English Growth, and Make:
What Flow'rs soe're of Art it had, were found
No tinsel'd slight Embroideries,
But all appear'd either the native Ground,
Or twisted, wrought, and interwoven with the Piece.

VI.
Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,
Not mask'd with any antick Dress,
Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace
(The gaping Rabbles dull delight,
And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)
Such did she enter on thy Stage,
And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:
Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,
In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,
Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,
What each from Nature does receive,
Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;
What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,
Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform
Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,
Makes this an odd, and freakish MONKY turn,
And that a grave and solemn ASS appear,
And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:
Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry
Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,
Or does incline, and byass it
From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;
All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,
As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,
As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,
And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.
(snip)
XIII.
Let meaner spirits stoop to low precarious Fame,
Content on gross and coarse Applause to live,
And what the dull, and sensless Rabble give,
Thou didst it still with noble scorn contemn,
Nor would'st that wretched Alms receive,
The poor subsistence of some bankrupt, sordid name:
Thine was no empty Vapor, rais'd beneath,
And form'd of common Breath,
The false, and foolish Fire, that's whisk'd about
By popular Air, and glares a while, and then goes out;
But 'twas a solid, whole, and perfect Globe of light,
That shone all over, was all over bright,
And dar'd all sullying Clouds, and fear'd no darkning night;
Like the gay Monarch of the Stars and Sky,
Who wheresoe're he does display
His sovereign Lustre, and majestick Ray,
Strait all the less, and petty Glories nigh
Vanish, and shrink away.
O'rewhelm'd, and swallow'd by the greater blaze of Day;
With such a strong, an awful and victorious Beam
Appear'd, and ever shall appear, thy Fame,
View'd, and ador'd by all th' undoubted Race of Wit,
Who only can endure to look on it.
The rest o'recame with too much light,
With too much brightness dazled, or extinguish'd quite:
Restless, and uncontroul'd it now shall pass
As wide a course about the World as he,
And when his long-repeated Travels cease
Begin a new, and vaster Race,
And still tread round the endless Circle of Eternity.

***********************************
Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so GOOD, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time*,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..

********************************
Jonson
Author.
...But, they that have incens'd me, can in Soul
Acquit me of that guilt. They know, I dare
To spurn, or bafful 'em; or squirt their Eyes
With Ink, or Urine: or I could do worse,
Arm'd with Archilochus fury, write Iambicks,
Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves;
RHIME 'EM TO DEATH, AS THEY DO IRISH RATS
In drumming Tunes. Or, living, I could stamp
Their foreheads with those deep, and PUBLICK BRANDS,
That the whole company of Barber-Surgeons
Should not take off, with all their Art, and Plaisters.
And these my Prints should last, still to be read
In their pale Fronts: when, what they write 'gainst me,
Shall, like a Figure drawn in Water, fleet,
And the poor wretched Papers be imploy'd
To clothe Tabacco, or some cheaper Drug.
This I could do, and make them infamous.
But, to what end? when their own deeds have mark'd 'em
And that I know, within his guilty Breast
Each slanderer bears a Whip, that shall torment him,
Worse, than a million of these temporal Plagues:
Which to pursue, were but a Feminine humour,
And far beneath the Dignity of Man.

*********************************
Jonson/Nemesis/Invidia/Giving What’s Due Oxford/Hybris/Petulantia/INSOLENCE/Outrageous Behaviour

———————————————


VOLPONE OR THE FOX

TO THE MOST NOBLE AND MOST EQUAL SISTERS, THE TWO FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES, FOR THEIR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE SHEWN TO HIS POEM IN THE PRESENTATION, BEN JONSON, THE GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGER, DEDICATES BOTH IT AND HIMSELF.
Never, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as that it could raise itself; but there must come both matter, occasion, commenders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune of all writers doth daily prove it, it
behoves the careful to provide well towards these accidents; and, having acquired them, to preserve that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am studious
to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere authority were satisfying, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it
with any forehead be opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much deformed their mistress; that, every day, their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their petulancy, it were an
act of the greatest injustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean hands) to fall under the least contempt. For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and
function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet, without first being a good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues,
keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength; that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can
alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind: this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily answered, that the writers of these days are other things; that not only
their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation,
blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over-true; but that all are embarked
in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the
use of such foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene: and, howsoever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest infant but hath
come into the world with all his teeth; I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe?
My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,) look into them, what broad reproofs have I used? Where have I been particular? Where personal? Except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy
to be taxed? Yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his disease? But it is not rumour can make men guilty, much less entitle me to other men's crimes. I know, that nothing can be so
innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing:
but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's simplest meanings. As for
those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it
without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity, than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a state, desire
rather to see fools and devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes Trebatius speak among these,
"Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, et odit."

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