We had rather you were weighd. Especially, when the
fate of all Bookes depends upon your capacities : and not of your
heads alone, but of your purses. Well ! It is now publique, & you
wil stand for your priviledges wee know : to read, and censure.
Do so, but buy it first. That doth best commend a Booke, the
Stationer saies. Then, how odde soever your braines be, or your
wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not. Judge
your six-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your five shillings worth at
a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome. But,
whatever you do, Buy. Censure will not drive a Trade, or make
the Jacke go. And though you be a Magistrate of wit, and sit on
the Stage at Black-Friers, or the Cock-pit, to arraigne Playes dailie,
know, these Playes have had their triall alreadie, and stood out all
Appeales ; and do now come forth quitted rather by a Decree of
Court, then any purchas'd Letters of commendation.
It had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to have bene wished, that
the Author himselfe had liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his
owne writings ; But since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by
death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his
Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to have collected &
publish'd them; and so to have publish'd them, as where (before)
you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies,
maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious
impostors, that expos'd them : even those, are now offer'd to your
view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in
their numbers, as he conceived the'.
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