preferred a garden and a cloister before a
crowd of followers, and the troublesome glory of an active life, which
robs the possessor of his rest and quiet, to secure the safety and
happiness of others. Seneca, with the help of his philosophy, could
never attain to that pitch of virtue: He only endeavoured to prevent
his fall by descending first, and offered to resign that wealth which
he knew he could no longer hold; he would only have made a present to
his master of what he foresaw would become his prey; he strove to
avoid the jealousy of a tyrant,--you dismissed yourself from the
attendance and privacy of a gracious king. Our age has afforded us
many examples of a contrary nature; but your lordship is the only one
of this. It is easy to discover in all governments, those who wait so
close on fortune, that they are never to be shaken off at any turn:
Such who seem to have taken up a resolution of being great; to
continue their stations on the theatre of business; to change with the
scene, and shift the vizard for another part--these men condemn in
their discourses that virtue which they dare not practise: But the
sober part of this present age, and impartial posterity, will do
right, both to your lordship and to them: And, when they read on what
accounts, and with how much magnanimity, you quitted those honours, to
which the highest ambition of an English subject could aspire, will
apply to you, with much more reason, what the historian said of a
Roman emperor, "_Multi diutius imperium tenuerunt; nemo fortius
reliquit._"

To this retirement of your lordship, I wish I could bring a better
entertainment than this play; which, though it succeeded on the stage,
will scarcely bear a serious perusal; it being contrived and written
in a month, the subject barren, the persons low, and the writing not
heightened with many laboured scenes. The consideration of these
defects ought to have prescribed more modesty to the author, than to
have presented it to that person in the world for whom he has the
greatest honour, and of whose patronage the best of his endeavours had
been unworthy: But I had not satisfied myself in staying longer, and
could never have paid the debt with a much better play. As it is, the
meanness of it will shew; at least, that I pretend not by it to make
any manner of return for your favours; and that I only give you a new
occasion of exercising your goodness to me, in pardoning the failings
and imperfections