H. HOWARD.

On Mr John Fletcher, and his Workes, never before published.

To flatter living fooles is easie slight:  But hard, to do the living-dead men right.  To praise a Landed Lord, is gainfull art:  But thanklesse to pay Tribute to desert.  This should have been my taske:  I had intent To bring my rubbish to thy monument, To stop some crannies there, but that I found No need of least repaire; all firme and sound.  Thy well-built fame doth still it selfe advance Above the Worlds mad zeale and ignorance, Though thou dyedst not possest of that same pelfe (Which Nobler soules call durt,) the City wealth:  Yet thou hast left unto the times so great A Legacy, a Treasure so compleat, That ’twill be hard I feare to prove thy Will:  Men will be wrangling, and in doubting still How so vast summes of wit were left behind, And yet nor debts nor sharers they can finde.  ’Twas the kind providence of fate, to lock Some of this Treasure up; and keep a stock For a reserve untill these sullen daies:  When scorn, and want, and danger, are the Baies That Crown the head of merit.  But now he Who in thy Will hath part, is rich and free.  But there’s a Caveat enter’d by command, None should pretend, but those can understand.

HENRY MODY, Baronet.

ON

Mr Fletchers Works.

Though Poets have a licence which they use As th’ ancient priviledge of their free Muse; Yet whether this be leave enough for me To write, great Bard, an Eulogie for thee:  Or whether to commend thy Worke, will stand Both with the Lawes of Verse and of the Land, Were to put doubts might raise a discontent Between the Muses and the ——­ I’le none of that.  There’s desperate wits that be (As their immortall Lawrell) Thunder-free; Whose personall vertues, ’bove the Lawes of Fate, Supply the roome of personall estate:  And thus enfranchis’d, safely may rehearse, Rapt in a lofty straine, [their] own neck-verse.  For he that gives the Bayes to thee, must then First take it from the Militarie Men; He must untriumph conquests, bid ’em stand, Question the strength of their victorious hand.  He must act new things, or go neer the sin, Reader, as neer as you and I have been:  He must be that, which He that tryes will swear I[t] is not good being so another Yeare. 
  And now that thy great name I’ve brought to [this],
To do it honour is to do amisse, What’s to be done to those, that shall refuse To celebrate, great Soule, thy noble Muse? Shall the poore State of all those wandring things, Thy Stage once rais’d to Emperors and Kings?  Shall rigid forfeitures (that reach our Heires) Of things that only fill with cares and feares?  Shall the privation of a friendlesse life, Made up of contradictions and strife?  Shall He be entitie, would antedate His own poore name, and thine annihilate?  Shall these be judgements great enough for one That dares not write thee an Encomion?