ness, 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."

And men may justly impute such rages, if continued, to the writer, as
his sports. The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the
present trade of the stage, in all their miscelline interludes, what
learned or liberal soul doth not already abhor? where nothing but the