My worthy friend, I am much pleas'd to know, You have begun to pay the debt you owe By promise, to so many pious friends, In printing your choice Poems; it commends Both them, and you, that they have been desir'd By persons of such Judgment; and admir'd They must be most, by those that best shal know What praise to holy Poetry we owe. So shall your Disquisitions too; for, there Choice learning, and blest piety, appear. All usefull to poor Christians: where they may Learne Primitive Devotion. Each Saints day Stands as a Land-mark in an erring age to guide fraile mortals in their pilgrimage To the Coelestiall _Can'an_; and each Fast, Is both the souls direction, and repast: All so exprest, that I am glad to know You have begun to pay the debt you owe. IZ. WA. * * * * * DEDICATION OF THE LIFE OF DONNE AND ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER. 1658. [The Life of John Donne, Dr. in Divinity, and Late Dean of Saint Pauls Church London. The second impression corrected and enlarged. Ecclus.48.14. _He did wonders in his life, and at his death his works were marvelous_. London, Printed by J.G. for R. Marriot, and are to be sold at his shop under S. Dunstans Church in Fleet-street. 1658.] _To My Noble & honoured Friend Sir Robert Holt of Afton, in the County of Warwick, Baronet._ Sir, When this relation of the life of Doctor Donne was first made publick, it had besides the approbation of our late learned & eloquent King, a conjunction with the Authors most excellent Sermons to support it; and thus it lay some time fortified against prejudice; and those passions that are by busie and malicious men too freely vented against the dead. And yet, now, after almost twenty yeares, when though the memory of Dr. Donne himself, must not, cannot die, so long as men speak English; yet when I thought Time had made this relation of him so like my self, as to become useless to the world, and content to be forgotten; I find that a retreat into a defired privacy, will not be afforded; for the Printers will again expose it and me to publick exceptions; and without those supports, which we first had and needed, and in an Age too, in which Truth & Innocence have not beene able to defend themselves from worse then severe censures. This I foresaw, and Nature teaching me selfe-preservation, and my long experience of your abilities assuring me that in you it may in found:[1] to you, Sir, do I make mine addreffes for an umbrage and protection: and I make it with so much humble boldnesse, as to say 'twere degenerous in you not to afford it. For, Sir,