no man is able to finish the work, which they with _Homer’s_ hawtie heroycal style haue begunne: and yet you woulde haue me (the least of the poets,) to make trial what I am able to doo therin. But me thinke I do heare you say, as you were woont, we being conuersant together: “What meane al these wordes? thou knowest that the vayne of thy verse doth most delight my humor. And seeing it is but for my priuate study, what meane you to allege all these allegations, as though _Orestes_ were _Zoilus_?” Syr, I confesse al this to be true: yet this I speake, to signifie vnto you, howe willyng the good wyl I doo beare vnto you hath made me, being otherwise vnwillyng to beare a sayle in such rough weather, where euery sea is ready to deuoure me. And when with sayles and oares (as they say,) I with al my diligence endeuoured to compasse the thing nowe accomplished, I founde myselfe euen in the myddest of the matter, clapt close with _Theseus_, in a returnable labarinth, to fight with despayre that miserable _Minotaur_: where, when I could finde no _Ariadne_, to lende me a bottome of twist, I looked that _Parcæ_ shoulde haue shread my twyne before my returne. Yet at the last wandring _Erato_, with her sister _Terpsichore_ perceiuing me with such diligence to trauise that maze, they willing to helpe the desyres of my mynd, said thus vnto me: Come forth thou wandring wight this way, Doo followe vs outright: We geue thee leaue, with poets’ penne, On Princes’ falles to write. Wherewith they leadyng me vnto the fountayne _Permestus_, I without any further determination, gallopped through the rest, whiche when leysure shall geue you leaue to reade, ceasse then to thinke on the L. _Buchurst_, or _Sackuyll_,[1165] let _Gascon_ and _Churchyarde_ be forgotten. And if you chaunce to see the meter, or matter, not so well polished, as beseemeth, then remember that they whose falles I haue here penned, were not of late tyme, but suche as lyued presently after the incarnation of Christe: and I haue not thought it decent, that the men of the olde worlde shoulde speake with so garnished a style, as they of the latter tyme.