MADAM,
IN the age of sacrifices, the truth of religion was not in the greatness and fat of the offerings, but in the devotion and zeal of the sacrificers: else what could a handful of gums have done in the sight of a hecatomb? or how might I appear[2] at this altar, except with those affections that no less love the light and witness, than they have the conscience 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.
- ↑ This lady was daughter to Robert earl of Leicester, a younger brother of sir Philip Sidney. She wrote a romance, called Urania, and seems to have been a woman of very considerable attainments. See the 103d Epigram.
- ↑ Or how might I appear, &c.] Before this sentence the quarto has a passage which is worth preserving. Jonson probably conceived it to break in upon the integrity of his metaphor, and therefore omitted it, upon the revision of his dedication. "How, yet, might a grateful mind be furnish'd against the iniquity of fortune, except, when she fail'd it, it had power to impart itself? A way found out, to overcome even those, whom, fortune hath enabled to return most, since they yet leave themselves more. In this assurance am I planted, and stand with those affections at this altar, as shall no more avoid the light and witness, than they do the conscience of your virtue."
