and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast.
For by the firm settling of these persuasions I became so much a
proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy
things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had
extolled, this effect it wrought with me, from that time forward their
art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all
preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never
write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying
sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not
after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not
be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things,
ought himself to be a true poem, that is a composition and pattern of
the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises
of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the
experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.

"These reasonings together with a certain niceness of nature, an
honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or what I
might be, which let envy call pride, and lastly that modesty, whereof,
though not in the title-page, yet here, I may be excused to make some
beseeming profession, all these uniting the supply of their natural
aid together, kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath
which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree to saleable
and unlawful prostitutions.

"Next, for hear me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my
younger feet wandered, I betook me among those lofty fables and
romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over
all Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he