Preface CONTENTS. Page i An Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. Abraham Cowley, v The Author's Preface to his edition in folio, 1656 1 The Author's Preface to the Cutter of Coleman Street 19 A Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy 29 A Discourse, by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver Cromwell Several Discourses, by way of Essays, in Verse and Prose :- 47 8. The Dangers of an honest Mau in much Company 203 9. The Shortness of Life, and Uncertainty of Riches..213 10. The Danger of Procrastination 11. Of Myself 220 227 THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE, TO HIS EDITION IN FOLIO, 1656. Ar my return lately into England, I met by great accident (for such I account it to be, that any copy of it should be extant any where so long, unless at his house who printed it,) a book entituled The Iron Age, and published under my name, during the time of my absence. I wondered very much how one who could be so foolish to write so ill verses, should yet be so wise to set them forth as another man's rather than his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the bastard upon such a person, whose stock of reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenance of his own numerous legitimate off-spring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the author to put forth some of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under mine: he had been in that a more pardonable plagiary, and had done less wrong by robbery, than he does by such a bounty; for nobody can B be justified by the imputation even of another's merit ; and our own coarse clothes are like to become us better than those of another man, though never so rich : but these, to say the truth, were so beggarly, that I myself was ashamed to wear them. It was in vain for me, that I avoided censure by the concealment of my own writings, if my reputation could be thus executed in effigie; and impossible it is for any good name to be in safety, if the malice of witches have the power to consume and destroy it in an image of their own making. This indeed was so ill made, and so unlike, that I hope the charm took no effect. So that I esteem myself less prejudiced by it, than by that which has been done to me since, almost in the same kind; which is, the publication of some things of mine without my consent or knowledge, and those so mangled and imperfect, that I could neither with honour acknowledge, nor with honesty quite disavow, them. Of which sort, was a comedy called The Guardian, printed in the year 1650; but made and acted before the Prince, in his passage through Cambridge towards York, at the beginning of the late unhappy war; or rather neither made nor acted, but rough-drawn only, and repeated; for the haste was so great, that it could neither be revised or perfected by the author, nor learned without-book by the actors, nor set forth in any measure tolerably by the officers of the college. After the representation (which, I confess, was some |