TO THE Great Example of Honour and Virtue, The Moft NOBLE WILLI A M, Earl of PEMBROKE, Lord Chamberlain, &c. MY LORD, N fo thick and dark an ignorance, as now al IN most covers the age, I crave leave to ftand near your light, and by that to be read. Pofterity may pay your benefit the honour and thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these Jiggiven times, to countenance a legitimate POEM. I call it fo, against all noife of opinion; from whose crude and airy reports, I appeal to the great and fingular faculty of judgment in your lordship, able to vindicate truth from error. the first (of this race) that ever I dedicated to It is any any person*; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less ambition. Now it approacheth your cenfure chearfully, and with the fame affurance that innocency would appear before a magiftrate. Your Lordship's most Faithful Honourer, BEN. JONSON. It is the firft (of this race) that ever I dedicated to any perfon.] Meaning his firft tragedy: for the Sejanus, tho' first acted and printed in 1605, 4to, was published without any dedication. The preface which here follows, I have added from the 4to edition of this play in 1635. то READER in ORDINARY. TH HE mufes forbid that I fhould restrain your medling, whom I fee already bufy with the title and tricking over the leaves: it is your own. I departed with my right, when I let it firft abroad; and now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise nor difpraise from you can affect me. Tho' you commend the two first acts, with the people, because they are the worft; and dislike the oration of Cicero, in regard you read fome pieces of it at school, and underftand them not yet; I fhall find the way to forgive you. Be any thing you will be at your own charge. Would I had deferv'd but half fo well of it in tranflation, as that ought to deferve of you in judgment, if you have any. I know you will pretend, whofoever you are, to have that, and more. But all pretenfions are not juft claims. The commendation of good things may fall within a many, the approbation but, in a few; for the most commend out of affection, felf-tickling, an eafinefs, or imitation: but men judge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty. And to those works that will bear a judge, nothing is more dangerous than a foolish praife. You will fay, I fhall not have yours therefore; but rather the contrary, all vexation of cenfure. If I were not above fuch moleftations now, I had great caufe to think unworthily of my studies, or they had fo of me. But I leave But I leave you to your exercise. Begin. To THE READER EXTRAORDINARY. You I would understand to be the better man, though places in court go otherwise: to you I fubmit myself and work. Farewel. BEN. JONSON.* This addrefs to the reader, taken from the 4to edition of this play, is again fet in its proper place. It has too much merit, and is fo curious a pattern of foothing a reader's prejudices, that it ought, by no means to be loft or forgotten. |