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<PB REF="1" N="485">
<HEAD>TO THE READER.</HEAD>
<P>To strive to lessen the greatness of the Attempt, were to take away the glory of the Action. To add to Sir
<HI>Philip Sidney,</HI> I know his rashness; a fault pardonable in me, if custom might as well excuse the offence, as youth may prescribe in offending in this kind. That he should undergo that burthen, whose mother-tongue differs as much from this language, as
<HI>Irish</HI> from
<HI>English,</HI> augments the danger of the enterprize, and gives your exspectation, perhaps an assurance what the event must be. Yet let no man judge wrong|fully of my endeavours: I have added a limb to
<HI>Appeles</HI>'s Picture; but my mind never entertained such vain hopes, to think it of perfection sufficient to delude the eyes of the most vulgar, with the likeness in the workmanship. No, no, I do not follow
<HI>Pythagoras</HI> his opinion of transmigrations: I am well assured divine
<HI>Sidney's</HI> Soul is not infused into me, whose judgment was only able to finish, what his invention was only worthy to undertake. For this, Courteous Reader, let it suf|fice I place Sir
<HI>Philip Sidney's</HI> desert (even in mine own esteem) as far beyond my endeavours, as the most fault-find|ing Censor can imagine this essay of mine to come short of his
<HI>Arcadia. Vale.</HI></P>
<CLOSER><SIGNED>R.B.</SIGNED></CLOSER>
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