He was most princely: Ever witness for him
Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;
the other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and yet so rising,
that Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.
His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little:
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
Ipswich and Oxford! one of which fell with him,
Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;
the other, though unfinish'd, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and yet so rising,
that Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.
His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little:
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.
Editions of the book were printed from imperfect manuscripts several times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but no edition has any final value until we come to that of S.W. Singer, who reprinted it, from what is fairly established to have been the author's manuscript, in 1815. The present edition follows that of Singer who slightly modernized the archaic orthography of the original manuscript, and made uniform its irregularities, though certain of the corrections made from the manuscript by Mr. F.S. Ellis, who edited it for the Kelmscott Press Edition in 1893, and for the Temple Classics Edition in 1899, have been embodied in it.5
