The Epistle Dedicatory.
and made it my business to draw such others as might be more serviceable to Your Majesty, and I hope more lasting. Since that time I never disobeyed my old Master's Commands till this Summer at the Wells, my Retirement there tempting me to divert those melancholy Thoughts, which the new Apparitions of Foreign Invasion, and Domestick Discontent gave us: But these Clouds being now happily blown over, and our Sun clearly shining out again, I have recovered the Relapse, it being suspected that it would have proved the Epidemical Disease of Age, which is apt to fall back into the Follies in Youth; yet Socrates, Aristotle and Cato did the same, and Scaliger saith that fragment of Aristotle was beyond any thing that Pindar or Homer ever wrote. I will not call this a Dedication, for those Epistles are commonly greater Absurdities than any that come after: For what Author can reasonably believe, that fixing the great Name of some eminent Patron in the Forehead of his Book can charm away Censure, and that the first Leaf should be a Curtain to draw over and hide all the deformities that stand behind it? Neither have I any need of such shifts, for most of the Parts of this Body have already had your Majesty's View: and having past the Test of so clear and sharp sighted a Judgment, which has as good a Title to give Law in Matters of this Nature as in any other, they who shall presume to dissent from Your Majesty, will do more wrong to their own Judgment, than their Judgment can do to me. And for those latter Parts which have not yet received your Majesty's favourable Aspect, if they who have seen them do not flatter me, {for I dare not trust my own Judgment) they will make it appear that it is not with me as with most of Mankind, who never forsake their Darling Vices, till their Vices forsake them; and that this Divorce was not Frigiditatis causâ, but an Act of Choice, and not of Necessity. Therefore, Sir, I shall only call it an humble Petition, That Your Majesty will please to pardon this new Amour to my old mistress, and my Disobedience to his Commands, to whose Memory I look upon with great Reverence and Devotion, and making a seriouus Reflection upon that wise Advice, it carries much greater weight with it now than when it was given, for when Age and Experience has so ripened Man's Discretion as to make it fit for use, either in private or publick Affairs, nothing blasts and corrupts the Fruit of it so much as the empty, airy Reputation of being nimis Poeta; and therefore I shall take my leave of the Muses, as two of my Predecessors did, saying,
Splendidis longum vale dico nugis,
Hic versus & cætera ludiera pono.
Your Majesty's most faithful
and loyal Subject, and most
dutiful and devoted Servant,
JO. DENHAM.
