A Sixth Book to the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

By R.B., of Lincoln’s-Inn, Esq.

TO THE READER

To strive to lessen the greatness of the attempt, were to take away the glory of the action. To add to Sir Philip Sidney, I know is 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 Irish from English, augments the danger of the enterprise, and gives your expectation, perhaps, an assurance what the event must be. Yet, let no man judge wrongfully of my endeavours: I have added a limb to Apelles’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 Pythagoras’s opinion of transmigration: I am well assured divine Sidney’s 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 suffice I place Sir Philip Sidney’s desert (even in mine own esteem) as far beyond my endeavours, as the most fault-finding censor can imagine this essay of mine to come short of his Arcadia. Vale.

R. B.