and base detraction; such a cloud hath the Devil drawn over the world's
judgment, whose opinion is in few years fallen so far below all
ballatry, that the lethargy is incurable: nay, some of the Stationers,
that had the selling of the First Part of this Poem, because it went not
so fast away in the sale, as some of their beastly and abominable trash,
(a shame both to our language and nation) have either despitefully left
out, or at least carelessly neglected the Epistles to the Readers, and
so have cozened the buyers with unperfected books; which these that have
undertaken the Second Part, have been forced to amend in the First, for
the small number that are yet remaining in their hands. And some of our
outlandish, unnatural, English, (I know not how otherwise to express
them) stick not to say that there is nothing in this Island worth
studying for, and take a great pride to be ignorant in any thing
thereof; for these, since they delight in their folly, I wish it may be
hereditary from them to their posterity, that their children may be
begg'd for fools to the fifth generation, until it may be beyond the
memory of man to know that there was ever other of their families:
neither can this deter me from going on with Scotland, if means and time
do not hinder me, to perform as much as I have promised in my First
Song:

Till through the sleepy main, to _Thuly_ I have gone,
And seen the Frozen Isles, the cold _Deucalidon_,
Amongst whose iron Rocks, grim _Saturn_ yet remains
Bound in those gloomy caves with adamantine chains.

And as for those cattle whereof I spake before, _Odi profanum vulgus, et
arceo_, of which I account them, be they never so great, and so I leave
them. To my friends, and the lovers of my labours, I wish all happiness.
_Michael Drayton._'