Yet, since he has given the Errata, I wish he would have enlarged them only a few sheets more; and then he would have spared me the labour of an answer.  For this cursed printer is so given to mistakes, that there is scarce a sentence in the Preface without some false grammar, or hard sense [i.e., difficulty in gathering the meaning] in it; which will all be charged upon the Poet:  because he is so good natured as to lay but three errors to the Printer’s account, and to take the rest upon himself; who is better able to support them.  But he needs not [to] apprehend that I should strictly examine those little faults; except I am called upon to do it.  I shall return, therefore, to that quotation of SENECA; and answer not to what he writes, but to what he means.

I never intended it as an Argument, but only as an Illustration of what I had said before [p. 570] concerning the Election of words.  And all he can charge me with, is only this, That if SENECA could make an ordinary thing sound well in Latin by the choice of words; the same, with like care, might be performed in English.  If it cannot, I have committed an error on the right hand, by commending too much, the copiousness and well sounding of our language:  which I hope my countrymen will pardon me.  At least, the words which follow in my Dramatic Essay will plead somewhat in my behalf.  For I say there [p. 570], That this objection happens but seldom in a Play; and then too, either the meanness of the expression may be avoided, or shut out from the verse by breaking it in the midst.

But I have said too much in the Defence of Verse.  For, after all, ’tis a very indifferent thing to me, whether it obtain or not.  I am content, hereafter to be ordered by his rule, that is, “to write it, sometimes, because it pleases me” [p. 575]; and so much the rather, because “he has declared that it pleases him.”

But, he has taken his last farewell of the Muses; and he has done it civilly, by honouring them with the name of his long acquaintances [p. 574]:  which is a compliment they have scarce deserved from him.

For my own part, I bear a share in the public loss; and how emulous soever I may be, of his Fame and Reputation, I cannot but give this testimony of his Style, that it is extreme[ly] poetical, even in Oratory; his Thoughts elevated, sometimes above common apprehension; his Notions politic and grave, and tending to the instruction of Princes and reformation of State:  that they are abundantly interlaced with variety of fancies, tropes, and figures, which the Critics have enviously branded with the name of Obscurity and False Grammar.

Well, he is now fettered in business of more unpleasant nature [p. 574].  The Muses have lost him, but the Commonwealth gains by it.  The corruption of a Poet is the generation of a Statesman.

He will not venture again into the Civil Wars of Censure [Criticism].