Much like to the mole in Æsop's fable, that, being blind herself, would in no wise be persuaded that any beast could see. The last, more shameful than both, that of their own country and natural speech, which together with their nurse's milk they sucked, they have so base regard and bastard judgment, that they will not only themselves not labour to garnish and beautify it, but also repine, that of other it should be embellished. Like to the dog in the manger, that himself can eat no hay, and yet barketh at the hungry bullock, that so fain would feed: whose currish kind, though it cannot be kept from barking, yet I conne them thank that they refrain from biting. Now, for the knitting of sentences, which they call the joints and members thereof, and for all the compass of the speech, it is round without roughness, and learned without hardness, such indeed as may be perceived of the least, understood of the most, but judged only of the learned. For what in most English writers useth to be loose, and as it were unright, in this Author is well grounded, finely framed, and strongly trussed up together. In regard whereof, I scorn and spue out the rakehelly rout of our ragged rhymers (for so themselves use to hunt the letter) which without learning boast, without judgment jangle, without reason rage and foam, as if some instinct of poetical spirit had newly ravished them above the meanness of common capacity. And being, in the midst of all their bravery, suddenly, either for want of matter, or rhyme; or having forgotten their former conceit; they seem to be so pained and travailed in their remembrance, as it were a woman in childbirth, or as that same Pythia, when the trance came upon her. "_Os rabidum fera corda domans_," etc. Nathless, let them a God's name feed on their own folly, so they seek not to darken the beams of others' glory. As for Colin, under whose person the Author's self is shadowed, how far he is from such vaunted titles and glorious shews, both himself sheweth, where he saith: "Of Muses, Hobbin, I conne no skill." And, "Enough is me to paint out my unrest," etc.