I heere offer to view a collection of certaine peices of poetry, which
have _flowne_ from hand to hand, these many yeares, in _private_ papers,
but were never _fixed_ for the _publique_ eie of the worlde to looke
upon, till now[34]. If that witt which runnes in every veyne of them
seeme somewhat _out of fashion_, because tis neither _amorous_ nor
_obscene_, thou must remember that the author, although scarse a _Divine_
when many of them were written, had not only so _masculine_ but even so
_modest_ a witt also, that he would lett nothing fall from his pen but
what he himselfe might owne, and never blush, when he was a _bishop_;
little imagining the age would ever come, when his calling should prove
more out of fashion than his witt could. As concerning any thing else to
be added in commendation of the author, I shall never thinke of it; for
as for those men who did _knowe him_, or ever _heard of him_, they need
none of _my good opinion_: and as for those who _knew him not_, and never
so much as _heard of him_, I am sure he needs none of _theirs_.
Farewell.