needs no proof: it is of the nature of a first principle, which is
received as soon as it is proposed; and needs not the reformation
which Descartes used to his; for we doubt not, neither can we
properly say, we think we admire and love you above all other men:
there is a certainty in the proposition, and we know it. With the
same assurance I can say, you neither have enemies, nor can scarce
have any; for they who have never heard of you can neither love or
hate you; and they who have, can have no other notion of you than
that which they receive from the public, that you are the best of
men. After this, my testimony can be of no farther use, than to
declare it to be daylight at high noon: and all who have the
benefit of sight can look up as well and see the sun.

It is true, I have one privilege which is almost particular to
myself, that I saw you in the east at your first arising above the
hemisphere: I was as soon sensible as any man of that light when it
was but just shooting out and beginning to travel upwards to the
meridian. I made my early addresses to your lordship in my "Essay
of Dramatic Poetry," and therein bespoke you to the world; wherein I
have the right of a first discoverer. When I was myself in the
rudiments of my poetry, without name or reputation in the world,
having rather the ambition of a writer than the skill; when I was
drawing the outlines of an art, without any living master to
instruct me in it--an art which had been better praised than studied
here in England; wherein Shakespeare, who created the stage among
us, had rather written happily than knowingly and justly; and
Jonson, who, by studying Horace, had been acquainted with the rules,
yet seemed to envy to posterity that knowledge, and, like an
inventor of some useful art, to make a monopoly of his learning--
when thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone or