of the sacrificers: else what could a handle of gums have done
in the sight of a hecatomb? or how might I appear at this altar,
except with those affections that no less love the light and
witness, than they have the conscience of your virtue? If what
I offer bear an acceptable odour, and hold the first strength,
it is your value of it, which remembers where, when, and to whom
it was kindled. Otherwise, as the times are, there comes rarely
forth that thing so full of authority or example, but by
assiduity and custom grows less, and loses. This, yet, safe in
your judgment (which is a Sidney's) is forbidden to speak more,
lest it talk or look like one of the ambitious faces of the time,
who, the more they paint, are the less themselves.

Your ladyship's true honourer,

BEN JONSON.


TO THE READER.

If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust
thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender,
beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert
never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in
poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of
dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature,
and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the
spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art?
When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and
presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all