had interwoven with the principal design, together with the
characters of the chiefest English persons (wherein, after Virgil
and Spenser, I would have taken occasion to represent my living
friends and patrons of the noblest families, and also shadowed the
events of future ages in the succession of our imperial line)--with
these helps, and those of the machines which I have mentioned, I
might perhaps have done as well as some of my predecessors, or at
least chalked out a way for others to amend my errors in a like
design; but being encouraged only with fair words by King Charles
the Second, my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future
subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my attempt;
and now age has overtaken me, and want (a more insufferable evil)
through the change of the times has wholly disenabled me; though I
must ever acknowledge, to the honour of your lordship, and the
eternal memory of your charity, that since this Revolution, wherein
I have patiently suffered the ruin of my small fortune, and the loss
of that poor subsistence which I had from two kings, whom I had
served more faithfully than profitably to myself--then your lordship
was pleased, out of no other motive but your own nobleness, without
any desert of mine, or the least solicitation from me, to make me a
most bountiful present, which at that time, when I was most in want
of it, came most seasonably and unexpectedly to my relief. That
favour, my lord, is of itself sufficient to bind any grateful man to
a perpetual acknowledgment, and to all the future service which one
of my mean condition can be ever able to perform. May the Almighty
God return it for me, both in blessing you here and rewarding you
hereafter! I must not presume to defend the cause for which I now
suffer, because your lordship is engaged against it; but the more
you are so, the greater is my obligation to you for your laying
aside all the considerations of factions and parties to do an action