Lucius Apuleius; being mooved thereunto by the right pleasant pastime
and delectable matter therein; I eftsoones consulted with myself, to
whom I might best offer so pleasant and worthy a work, devised by
the author, it being now barbarously and simply framed in our English
tongue. And after long deliberation had, your honourable lordship came
to my remembrance, a man much more worthy, than to whom so homely and
rude a translation should be presented. But when I again remembred the
jesting and sportfull matter of the booke, unfit to be offered to any
man of gravity and wisdome, I was wholly determined to make no Epistle
Dedicatory at all; till as now of late perswaded thereunto by my
friends, I have boldly enterprised to offer the same to your Lordship,
who as I trust wil accept the same, than if it did entreat of some
serious and lofty matter, light and merry, yet the effect thereof
tendeth to a good and vertuous moral, as in the following Epistle to the
reader may be declared. For so have all writers in times past employed
their travell and labours, that their posterity might receive some
fruitfull profit by the same. And therfore the poets feined not their
fables in vain, considering that children in time of their first
studies, are very much allured thereby to proceed to more grave and
deepe studies and disciplines, whereas their mindes would quickly loath
the wise and prudent workes of learned men, wherein in such unripe
years they take no spark of delectation at all. And not only that profit
ariseth to children by such feined fables, but also the vertues of
men are covertly thereby commended, and their vices discommended and
abhorred. For by the fable of Actaeon, where it is feigned that he saw
Diana washing her selfe in a well, hee was immediately turned into an
Hart, and so was slain of his own Dogs; may bee meant, That when a
man casteth his eyes on the vain and soone fading beauty of the world,
consenting thereto in his minde, hee seemeth to bee turned into a brute
beast, and so to be slain by the inordinate desire of his owne affects.