them; not without a fond hardie hope, that I may perhaps be able to
bleare the eyes of the Judges from discerning them. But it is as
much for the benefit of my application, as for the good of mine
invention and force. And I doe not furiously front, and bodie to
bodie wrestle with those old champions: it is but by flights,
advantages, and false offers I seek to come within them, and if I
can, to give them a fall. I do not rashly take them about the necke,
I doe but touch them, nor doe I go so far as by my bargaine I would
seeme to doe; could I but keepe even with them, I should then be an
honest man; for I seeke not to venture on them, but where they are
strongest. To doe as I have seen some, that is, to shroud themselves
under other armes, not daring so much as to show their fingers ends
unarmed, and to botch up all their works (as it is an easie matter
in a common subject, namely for the wiser sort) with ancient
inventions, here and there hudled up together. And in those who
endeavoured to hide what they have filched from others, and make it
their owne, it is first a manifest note of injustice, then a plaine
argument of cowardlinesse; who having nothing of any worth in
themselves to make show of, will yet under the countenance of others
sufficiencie goe about to make a faire offer: Moreover (oh great
foolishnesse) to seek by such cosening [Footnote: Cheating.] tricks
to forestall the ignorant approbation of the common sort, nothing
fearing to discover their ignorance to men of understanding (whose
praise only is of value) who will soone trace out such borrowed
ware. As for me, there is nothing I will doe lesse. I never speake
of others, but that I may the more speake of my selfe. This
concerneth not those mingle-mangles of many kinds of stuffe, or as
the Grecians call them Rapsodies, that for such are published, of
which kind I have (since I came to yeares of discretion) seen divers
most ingenious and wittie; amongst others, one under the name of