As stated above, it has been thought better to follow the miscellaneous arrangement of _1653_ than the classified but not strictly chronological one of _1677_. For those, however, who may desire it, the chronological order of the _political_ poems is here added: 1637-8, _Princess Elizabeth's Birth_; 1640, _A Dialogue_; 1641, _Epitaph on Strafford_, _Smectymnuus_, _The King's Return_; 1642, _Rupertismus_; 1643, _Upon Sir Thomas Martin_, _The Mixed Assembly_; 1643-4, _The Rebel Scot_, _The Scots' Apostasy_; 1645, _The Hue and Cry_, _Elegy on Laud_, _The General Eclipse_, _The King's Disguise_; 1649, _Elegy on Charles I_. _Preface of Cleaveland Revived_ To the Discerning Reader. <Prefixed to _Cleaveland Revived_, 1659[1]> Worthy Friend, there is a saying, _Once well done, and ever done_; the wisest men have so considerately acted in their times, as by their learned works to build their own monuments, such as might eternize them to future ages: our Jonson named his, Works, when others were called Plays, though they cost him much of the lamp and oil; yet he so writ, as to oblige posterity to admire them. Our deceased Hero, Mr. Cleveland, knew how to difference legitimate births from abortives, his mighty genius anvilled out what he sent abroad, as his informed mind knew how to distinguish betwixt writing much and well; a few of our deceased poet's pages being worth cartloads of the scribblers of these times. It was my fortune to be in Newark, when it was besieged, where I saw a few [some] manuscripts of Mr. Cleveland's. Amongst others I have heard that he writ of the Treaty at Uxbridge, as I have been informed since by a person I intrusted to speak with one of Mr. Cleveland's noble friends, who received him courteously, and satisfied his inquiries; as concerning the papers that were left in his custody, more particularly of the Treaty at Uxbridge, that it was not finished, nor any of his other papers fit for the press. They were offered to the judicious consideration of one of the most accomplished persons of our age, he refusing to have them in any further examination, as he did not conceive that they could be published without some injury to Mr. Cleveland; from which time they have remained sealed and locked up: neither can I wonder at this obstruction, when I consider the disturbances our author met with in the time of the siege, how scarce and bad the paper was, the ink hardly to be discerned on it. The intimacy I had with Mr. Cleveland before and since these civil wars, gained most of these papers from him, it being not the least of his misfortunes, out of the love he had to pleasure his friends, to be unfurnished with his own manuscripts, as I have heard him say often. He was not so happy as to have any considerable collection of his own papers, they being dispersed amongst his friends; some whereof when he writ for them, he had no other answer, but that they were lost, or