lofty measures of sententiously composed tragedies. How much you shall make me and the rest of your private friends beholden to you, I list not to discourse: and therefore grounding upon these alleged reasons; that the suppressing of this tragedy, so worthy for the press, were no other thing than wilfully to defraud yourself of an universal thank, your friends of their expectations, and sweet Gismund of a famous eternity, I will cease to doubt of any other pretence to cloak your bashfulness, hoping to read it in print (which lately lay neglected amongst your papers) at our next appointed meeting. I bid you heartily farewell. From Pyrgo in Essex, August the eighth, 1591. _Tuus fide & facultate_ GUIL. WEBBE.[3] To the Worshipful and Learned Society, the GENTLEMEN STUDENTS of the Inner Temple, with the rest of his singular good Friends, the GENTLEMEN of the Middle Temple, and to all other courteous Readers, R.W. wisheth increase of all health, worship, and learning, with the immortal glory of the graces adorning the same. Ye may perceive (right Worshipful) in perusing the former epistle sent to me, how sore I am beset with the importunities of my friends to publish this pamphlet: truly I am and have been (if there be in me any soundness of judgment) of this opinion, that whatsoever is committed to the press is commended to eternity, and it shall stand a lively witness with our conscience, to our comfort or confusion, in the reckoning of that great day. Advisedly, therefore, was that proverb used of our elder philosophers, _Manum a tabula_: withhold thy hand from the paper, and thy papers from the print or light of the world: for a lewd word escaped is irrevocable, but a bad or base discourse published in print is intolerable. Hereupon I have endured some conflicts between reason and judgment, whether it were convenient for the commonwealth, with the _indecorum_ of my calling (as some think it) that the memory of Tancred's tragedy should be again by my means revived, which the oftener I read over, and the more I considered thereon, the sooner I was won to consent thereunto: calling to mind that neither the thrice reverend and learned father, M. Beza, was ashamed in his younger years to send abroad, in his own name, his tragedy of "Abraham,"[4] nor that rare Scot (the scholar of our age) Buchanan, his most pathetical Jephtha. Indeed I must willingly confess this work simple, and not worth comparison to any of theirs: for the writers of them were grave men; of this, young heads: in them is shown the perfection of their studies; in this, the imperfection of their wits. Nevertheless herein they all agree, commending virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their overthrow that suppress not their unruly affections. These things noted herein, how simple soever the verse be, I hope the matter will be acceptable to the wise.