e of your virtue? If what
I offer bear an acceptable odour, and hold the first strength,
it is your value of it, which remembers where, when, and to whom
it was kindled. Otherwise, as the times are, there comes rarely
forth that thing so full of authority or example, but by
assiduity and custom grows less, and loses. This, yet, safe in
your judgment (which is a Sidney's) is forbidden to speak more,
lest it talk or look like one of the ambitious faces of the time,
who, the more they paint, are the less themselves.

Your ladyship's true honourer,

BEN JONSON.

TO THE READER.

If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust
thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender,
beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert
never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in
poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of
dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature,
and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the
spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art?
When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and
presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all
diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when
they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with
their ignorance. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and
sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice
of judgment. For they commend writers, as they do fencers or
wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put for it with
a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows:
when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their
disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that
boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who
always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some
thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it
comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks
out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and
vile about it: as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness,
than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good
to any man against his will; for I know, if it were put to the
question of theirs and mine, the worse would find more
suffrages: because the most favour common errors. But I give
thee this warning, that there is a great difference between
tho