Thus desiring the king of heaven to increase his graces in ye both, granting that your ends may be as honourable as your lives are virtuous, I leave with a vain babble of many needless words to trouble you longer.
Your Worships' most dutiful
and humble Orator,
ROBERT WILMOT.
TO HIS FRIEND R.W.
Master R.W., look not now for the terms of an intreater: I will beg no longer; and for your promises, I will refuse them as bad payment: neither can I be satisfied with anything but a peremptory performance of an old intention of yours, the publishing I mean of those waste papers (as it pleaseth you to call them, but, as I esteem them, a most exquisite invention) of Gismund's tragedy. Think not to shift me off with longer delays, nor allege more excuses to get further respite, lest I arrest you with my actum est, and commence such a suit of unkindness against you, as when the case shall be scann'd before the judges of courtesy, the court will cry out of your immoderate modesty. And thus much I tell you before: you shall not be able to wage against me in the charges growing upon this action, especially if the worshipful company of the Inner-Temple gentlemen patronise my cause, as undoubtedly they will, yea, and rather plead partially for me, than let my cause miscarry, because themselves are parties. The tragedy was by them most pithily framed, and no less curiously acted in view of her Majesty, by whom it was then as princely accepted, as of the whole honourable audience notably applauded: yea, and of all men generally desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind: no, were the Roman Seneca the censurer. The brave youths that then (to their high praises) so feelingly performed the same in action, did shortly after lay up the book unregarded, or perhaps let it run abroad (as many parents do their children once past dandling) not respecting so much what hard fortune might befall it being out of their fingers, as how their heroical wits might again be quickly conceived have been ever since wonderful fertile. But this orphan of theirs (for he wand'reth as it were fatherless) hath notwithstanding, by the rare and beautiful perfections appearing in him, hitherto never wanted great favourers and loving preservers. Among whom I cannot sufficiently commend your charitable zeal and scholarly compassion towards him, that have not only rescued and defended him from the devouring jaws of oblivion, but vouchsafed also to apparel him in a new suit at your own charges, wherein he may again more boldly come abroad, and by your permission return to his old parents, clothed perhaps not in richer or more costly furniture than it went from them, but in handsomeness and fashion more answerable to these times, wherein fashions are so often altered. Let one word suffice for your encouragement herein; namely, that your commendable pains in disrobing him of his antique curiosity, and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English terms (not diminishing, but more augmenting his artificial colours of absolute poesy, derived from his first parents) cannot but be grateful to most men's appetites, who upon our experience we know highly to esteem such lofty measures of sententiously composed tragedies.
How much you shall make me and the rest of your private friends beholden to you, I list not to discourse: and therefore grounding upon these alleged reasons; that the suppressing of this tragedy, so worthy for the press, were no other thing than wilfully to defraud yourself of an universal thank, your friends of their expectations, and sweet Gismund of a famous eternity, I will cease to doubt of any other pretence to cloak your bashfulness, hoping to read it in print (which lately lay neglected amongst your papers) at our next appointed meeting.
I bid you heartily farewell. From Pyrgo in Essex, August the eighth, 1591.
Tuus fide & facultate
GUIL. WEBBE.[3]
To the Worshipful and Learned Society, the GENTLEMEN STUDENTS of the Inner Temple, with the rest of his singular good Friends, the GENTLEMEN of the Middle Temple, and to all other courteous Readers, R.W. wisheth increase of all health, worship, and learning, with the immortal glory of the graces adorning the same.
Ye may perceive (right Worshipful) in perusing the former epistle sent to me, how sore I am beset with the importunities of my friends to publish this pamphlet: truly I am and have been (if there be in me any soundness of judgment) of this opinion, that whatsoever is committed to the press is commended to eternity, and it shall stand a lively witness with our conscience, to our comfort or confusion, in the reckoning of that great day.