Coxcomb," attributed to one John Caryll.

TO

MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND,

SIR CHARLES SEDLEY, BART[1].

SIR,

The design of dedicating plays is as common and unjust, as that of
desiring seconds in a duel. It is engaging our friends, it may be, in
a senseless quarrel where they have much to venture, without any
concernment of their own[2]. I have declared thus much beforehand, to
prevent you from suspicion, that I intend to interest either your
judgment or your kindness, in defending the errors of this comedy. It
succeeded ill in the representation, against the opinion of many of
the best judges of our age, to whom you know I read it, ere it was
presented publicly. Whether the fault was in the play itself, or in
the lameness of the action, or in the number of its enemies, who came
resolved to damn it for the title, I will not now dispute. That would
be too like the little satisfaction which an unlucky gamester finds in
the relation of every cast by which he came to lose his money. I have
had formerly so much success, that the miscarriage of this play was
only my giving Fortune her revenge; I owed it her, and she was
indulgent that she exacted not the payment long before. I will
therefore deal more reasonably with you, than any poet has ever done
with any patron: I do not so much as oblige you for my sake, to pass
two ill hours in reading of my play. Think, if you please, that this
dedication is only an occasion I have taken, to do myself the greatest
honour imaginable with posterity; that is, to be recorded in the
number of those men whom you have favoured with your friendship and
esteem. For I am well assured, that, besides the present satisfaction
I have, it will gain me the greatest part of my reputation with after
ages, when they shall find me valuing myself on your kindness to me; I
may have reason to suspect my own credit with them, but I have none to
doubt of yours. And they who, perhaps, would forget me in my poems,
would remember me in this epistle.

This was the course which has formerly been practised by the poets of
that nation, who were masters of the universe. Horace and Ovid, who
had little reason to distrust their immortality, yet took occasion to
speak with honour of Virgil, Varius, Tibullus, and Propertius, their
contemporaries; as if they sought, in the testimony of their
friendship, a farther evidence of their