To conclude, (least we tire your patience with tedious preambles) it is our desire that you will have a charitable opinion of us, and censure not our writings according to their desert; we are ready to condemn them, before you examine their faults, what would ye more? We are not insensible, that_ ours _are many, and are forc’t to bear the burden of the_ Printers _too; we know the stile is mean and vulgar, so are the Interlocutors, and therefore most requisite and allowable; the Subject is Evil, (you say) and may vitiate the Reader; the_ Bee _gathers honey from the worst of weeds; and the_ Toad _poison, from the best of Herbs. An ignorant young_ Plowman _learn’d from a Sermon how to steal an Ox, by the Parsons introducing a Simile; even as_ the stubborn Horn is made soft, pliable, and to be shaped as you please, by laying a Hot loaf thereon; _so is &c. which he trying so effectually chang’d the form of the_ Ox-head, _that the right Owner knew not his own Beast. There is no matter so good, but may be perverted, which is worst of all, for_, Corruptio optimi est pessima; _and there is no Subject so bad, out of which some good may not be collected; this drolling discourse, will, I question not, in the reading, prove not only facetious, but profitable, which if you find, we have obtain’d our desired end._ (_Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci._) _And subscribe our selves_ Your Friends and Servants _Richard Head_. _Fra. Kirkman_. [Illustration] THE ENGLISH ROGUE Continued in the Life of MERITON LATROON, AND OTHER EXTRAVAGANTS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _PART, IV._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. I. _Sayling from St._ Helena, &c. _Landing at_ Messina, _the Captain_, Latroon, &c. _sell Ship and Goods; the Seamen falling out and killing one another, they leave them and go for_ Palermo; _Thence they travel into the Country, and describe it with its Rarities and Wonders. A comical Adventure in a house supposedly haunted, as they travelled through_ Gergento _with their Mulletteer_.