IGNOTO. I LOVE thee not for sacred chastity. I love thee not for thy enchanting eye, I love thee not for that my soul doth dance, And leap with pleasure when those lips of thine, Give musical and graceful utterance, To some (by thee made happy) poet's line. I love thee not for voice or slender small, 'Faith wench! I cannot court thy sprightly eyes, I cannot whine in puling elegies, I am not fashion'd for these amorous times, Sweet wench I love thee, yet I will not sue, ) thee I'll not carouse a health to honour thee, Nor will I wear a rotten Bourbon lock, But by the chaps of hell to do thee good, PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. of TO HIS KIND AND TRUE FRIEND, EDWARD BLOUNT. BLOUNT: I purpose to be blunt with you, and out my dulness to encounter you with a dedication in memory of that pure elemental wit Chr. Marlowe, whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the churchyard in, at the least, three or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, and grow humorously frantic upon the taste of it. Well, lest you should, let me tell you: this spirit was sometime a familiar of your own, Lucan's first book translated; which, in regard of your old right in it, I have raised in the circle of your patronage. But stay now, Edward, if I mistake not, you are to accommodate yourself with some few instructions, touching the property of a patron, that you are not yet possessed of; and to study them for your better grace as our gallants do fashions. First, you must be proud and think you have merit enough in you, though you are never so empty; then when I bring you the book take physic, and keep state, assign me a time by your man to come again, and afore the day be sure to have changed your lodging; in the mean time sleep little, and sweat with the invention of some pitiful dry jest or two which you may happen to utter, with some little, or not at all, marking of your friends when you |