I heere offer to view a collection of certaine peices of poetry, which have flowne from hand to hand, these many yeares, in private papers, but were never fixed for the publique eie of the worlde to looke upon, till now[34]. If that witt which runnes in every veyne of them seeme somewhat out of fashion, because tis neither amorous nor obscene, thou must remember that the author, although scarse a Divine when many of them were written, had not only so masculine but even so modest a witt also, that he would lett nothing fall from his pen but what he himselfe might owne, and never blush, when he was a bishop; little imagining the age would ever come, when his calling should prove more out of fashion than his witt could. As concerning any thing else to be added in commendation of the author, I shall never thinke of it; for as for those men who did knowe him, or ever heard of him, they need none of my good opinion: and as for those who knew him not, and never so much as heard of him, I am sure he needs none of theirs.
Farewell.
COMMENDATORY POEMS.
TO
THE DEANE,
(From Flower in Northamptonshire, 1625,)
NOW THE WORTHY BISHOP OF NORWICH.
By ROBERT GOMERSALL[35].
Still to be silent, or to write in prose,
Were alike sloth, such as I leave to those