"That he his foe not able to withstand,
Was ta'en in battle and his eyes out-done."

The graver has indeed done out the life so cleverly that for hundreds of
years learned pedants and others have thought that the figure
represented a real man, and altogether failed to perceive that it was a
mere stuffed dummy clothed in an impossible coat, cunningly composed of
the front of the left arm buttoned on to the back of the same left arm,
as to form a double left armed apology for a man. Moreover, this dummy
is surmounted by a hideous staring mask, furnished with an imaginary
ear, utterly unlike anything human, because, instead of being hollowed
in, it is rounded out something like the rounded outside of a shoe-horn,
in order to form a cup which would cover and conceal any real ear that
might be behind it.

Perhaps the reader will more fully understand the full meaning of B.I.'s
lines if I paraphrase them as follows:--

To the Reader.

The dummy that thou seest set here,
Was put instead of Shake-a-speare;
Wherein the Graver had a strife
To extinguish all of Nature's life;
O, could he but have drawn his mind
As well as he's concealed behind
His face; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in brasse.
But since he cannot, do not looke
On his mas'd Picture, but his Booke.