[The only copy of the 1595 edition, at present known, is in the City Library, at Hamburg.
It was recovered, and reprinted in 1875 by Herr Wilhelm Wagner, Ph.D., in Vol. X. of the Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch; copies of this particular text being also separately printed.
A limited Subscription edition, of fifty-one copies, was printed by Rev. A. B. Grosart, LL.D., F.S.A., of Blackburn, in 1879: with a fresh collation of the text by B. S. Leeson, Esq., of Hamburg.
The present modernized text is based on a comparison of the above two reprints of the 1595 edition with the text of the London edition of 1613 in which some headings therein inserted between [ ], on pp. 256, 276, 278) first occur.]
A Letter written by a Gentleman to the Author, his friend.
Friend Philoparthen,
N perusing your Loving Folly, and your Declining from it; I do behold Reason conquering Passion. The infirmity of loving argueth you are a man; the firmness thereof, discovereth a good wit and the best nature: and the falling from it, true virtue. Beauty was always of force to mislead the wisest; and men of greatest perfection have had no power to resist Love. The best are accompanied with vices, to exercise their virtues; whose glory shineth brightest in resisting motives of pleasure, and in subduing affections. And though I cannot altogether excuse your Loving Folly; yet I do the less blame you, in that you loved such a one as was more to be commended for her virtue, than beauty: albeit even for that too, she was so well accomplished with the gifts of Nature as in mine conceit (which, for good cause, I must submit as inferior to yours) there was nothing wanting, either in the one or the other, that might add more to her worth, except it were a more due and better regard of your love; which she requited not according to your deserts, nor answerable to herself in her other parts of perfection. Yet herein it appeareth you have made good use of Reason; that being heretofore lost in youthful vanity, have now, by timely discretion, found yourself!