To intimate that he can nothing need

Whom angels guard and God himself doth feed. By force or sly temptations to prevail,

Both temporal and ghostly foes assail

His naked person; but without a wound,

Their darts are broke or back on them rebound.

So with Nec Curo those he entertains;

And to express how highly he disdains

The best contents the world afford him may,

A globe terrestrial he doth spurn away.

To any body.

TO recreate myself after some more serious studies, I took occasion to exercise my invention in the illustration of my Motto; which being thus finished, my friends made me believe, it was worth the preserving, and grew so importunate for copies thereof, that I could not deny them. But doubting lest by often transcribing, it might be much lamed through the scribes' insufficiency, as many things of this nature are, I thought fitting rather to exemplify the same by the press than by the pen, and to that end delivered it over to some Stationers to have only so many copies, as I intended to bestow.

Yet considering that other men, to whom I meant them not, might peradventure come to the view of those lines, I thought it not amiss, by way of prevention, to remove such cavils as may be made against me by those unto whom I am unknown. Not that I care to give every idle reader an account of my intentions; but to shew the ingenuous, that the carelessness expressed in this Motto proceeds from an undistempered care to make all my actions, as near as I can, such as may be decent, warrantable, and becoming an honest man; and that those, who shall foolishly seek from thence to pick advantages against me, may know, I am too well advised to write any thing, which they shall be justly able to interpret either to my hindrance or disparagement.

Let me want esteem among all good men, if I purposed, or have any secret desire in me, that any part of this should be applied to any particular man, but so as every one ought to apply things unto his own conscience; and he that believes me not, I fear is guilty. My intent was to draw the true picture of mine own heart; that my friends, who knew me outwardly, might have some representation of my inside also; and that if they liked the form of it, they might, wherein they were defective,

But my

fashion their own minds thereunto. principal intention was, by recording those thoughts, to confirm mine own resolution, and to prevent such alterations, as time and infirmities may work upon me. And if there be no more reason inferred against me to remove my opinion than I am yet apprehensive of, I am confidently persuaded, that neither fear nor force shall compel me to deny any thing, which I have affirmed in this Poem. For I had rather be degraded from the greatest title of honour that could be given me, than constrained to deny this Motto.

Proud arrogance, I know, and enough too, will be laid to my charge. But those, who both know me and the necessity of this resolution, will excuse me of it. The rest, if they mis-censure me, are part of those things I care not for.

The language is but indifferent; for I affected matter more than words. The method is none at all; for I was loth to make a business of a recreation, And we know, he, that rides abroad for his pleasure, is not tied so strictly to keep highways, as he that takes a journey.

If the intermixing of slight and weighty things together be offensive to any, let them understand,

that if they well observe it, they shall find a seriousness even in that which they imagine least momentary. And if they had as well observed the conditions of men as I have done, they would perceive that the greatest number, like children which are allured to school with points and apples, must be drawn on with some frivolous expressions, or else will never listen to the grave precepts of virtue; which, when they once hear, do many times beget a delight in them before they be aware.

Many dishes of meat, which we affect not, may be so cook'd that we shall have a good appetite unto them; so many men, who take no pleasure to seek virtue in grave treatises of Morality, may, perhaps, finding her unlook'd for, masked under the habit of a light Poem, grow enamoured on her beauty.

The foolish Canterbury Tale in my Scourge of Vanity, which I am now almost ashamed to read over, even that hath been by some praised for a witty passage; aud I have heard divers seriously protest, that they have much more feelingly been informed and moved to detest the vanity of the humour there scoffed at, by that rude Tale, than they were by the most grave precepts of philosophy. And that makes me oftentimes affect some things, in regard of their usefulness, which being considered