TO THE LORD VISCOUNT FALKLAND. MY LORD, WHEN first it entered into my thoughts to make this present to your lordship, I received not only encouragement, but pleasure; since, upon due examination of myself, I found it was not a bare presumption, but my duty to the remembrance of many extraordinary favours which I have received at your hands. For heretofore having had the honour to be near you, and bred under the same discipline with you, I cannot but own, that, in a great measure, I owe the small share of letters I have, to your lordship. For your lordship's example taught me to be ashamed of idleness; and I first grew in love with books, and learned to value them, by the wonderful progress which, even in your tender years, you made in them: so that learning and improvement grew daily more and more lovely in my eyes, as they shone in you. Your lordship has an extraordinary reason to be a patron of poetry, for your great father loved it. May your lordship's fame and employments grow as great, or greater than his were! and may your virtues find a poet to record them, equal, if possible, to that great genius* which sung of him! My slender humble talent must not hope for it; for you have a judgment which I must always submit to, a general goodness which I never, to it's worth, can value and who can praise that well, which he knows not how to comprehend? * Mr. Waller. O. Already the eyes and expectations of men of the best judgment are fixed upon you: for wheresoever you come, you have their attention when present, and their praise when you are gone: and I am sure (if I obtain but your lordship's pardon) I shall have the congratulation of all my friends, for having taken this opportunity to express myself, Your Lordship's Most humble Servant, THO. OTWAY. PROLOGUE. In ages past, (when will those times renew?) His manly head, and thro' all nature steer'd; Therefore Mecenas, that great fav'rite, rais'd To such low shifts, of late, are poets worn, Whilst we both wit's and Cæsar's absence mourn. } When shall we there again behold him sit, The king had been attacked by an alarming illness. |