EPILOGUS.
Your modest silence, full of heedy stillness,
Makes me thus speak: a voluntary illness
Is merely[583] senseless; but unwilling error,
Such as proceeds from too rash youthful fervour,
May well be call’d a fault, but not a sin:
Rivers take names from founts where they begin.
Then let not too severe an eye peruse
The slighter brakes[584] of our reformèd Muse,
Who could herself herself of faults detect,
But that she knows ’tis easy to correct, 10
Though some men’s labour: troth, to err is fit,
As long as wisdom’s not profess’d, but wit.
Then till another’s happier Muse appears,[585]
Till his Thalia feast your learnèd ears,
To whose desertful lamps pleased Fates impart
Art above nature, judgment above art,
Receive this piece, which hope nor fear yet daunteth:
He that knows most knows most how much he wanteth.
[583] Wholly.
[584] Clearly another form of bracks, i.e., cracks, flaws.
[585] A fine compliment to Ben Jonson.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
Transcriber’s Note:
Minor punctuation errors were corrected. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to follow the section of text or scene of the play in which the related anchors occur. In screen view, transliterations of Greek appear when the cursor is placed over the dotted underline text.
Line numbers in the original text are occasionally inaccurate. Line numbers for the prose portions of plays may not be accurate if the display width of the user’s viewer does not match the width of the original text.
Anomolies noted; left unchanged:
—In Act V of “Antonio’s Revenge,” the first two scenes are both identified as “Scene 1.”
—Footnotes [78], [237], and [478] each have two anchors that refer to the note.
Changes to text:
—Introduction: ‘indentified’ to ‘identified’ “... he is to be identified with ...”
—First part of Antonio and Mellida, Act III, Scene 1, line 113: duplicate ‘myself’ removed from “... Well, ere yon sun set, I’ll show myself myself,...”
—The Malcontent, Act V, Scene 3, line 88: duplicate ‘a’ removed from “... Life is a a frost of cold felicity,...”