I conjure you in the name of all the Sylvan Deities, and of the Muses,
whom you honour, and they reciprocally love and honour you,--rescue
this old and passionate _Ditty_--the very flower of an old _forgotten
Pastoral_, which had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful
Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of
Writing----rescue it from the profane hands of every common Composer:
and in one of your tranquillest moods, when you have most leisure from
those sad thoughts, which sometimes unworthily beset you; yet a mood,
in itself not unallied to the better sort of melancholy; laying by for
once the lofty Organ, with which you shake the Temples; attune, as to
the Pipe of Paris himself, to some milder and more love-according
instrument, this pretty Courtship between Paris and his (then-not as
yet-forsaken) Œnone. Oblige me; and all more knowing Judges of Music
and of Poesy; by the adaptation of fit musical numbers, which it only
wants to be the rarest Love Dialogue in our language.
Your Implorer,