My lord,

though poems have lost much of their antient value, yet I will presume to make this present to your lordship; and the rather because poems (if they have any thing preciuous in them) do, like jewels, attract a greater esteem when they come into the possession of great persons than when they are in ordinary hands.

The excuse which men have had for dedication of books has been to protect them from the malice of readers: but a defence of this nature was fitter for your forces when you were early known to learned men (and had no other occasion for your abilities but to vendicate authors) than at this season when you are of extraordinary use to the whole nation.

Yet when I consider how many and how violent they are who persecute dramatick poetry, I will then rather call this a dedication than a present; as not intending by it to pass any kind of obligation, but to receive a great benefit; since I cannot be safe unless I am shelter'd behind your lordship.

Your name is so eminent in the justice which you convey though all the different members of this great empire, that my Rhodians seem to enjoy a better harbour in the pacifique Thanes, than they had on the Mediterranean; and I have brought Solyman to be arraign'd at your tribunal, where you are the censor of his civility and magnificence.

Dramatick poetry meets with the same persecution now from such who esteem themselves the most refin'd and civil as it ever did from the barbarous. And they whilst those vertuous enemies deny heroique play to the gentry, they entertain the people with a seditious farce of their own counterfeit gravity. But I hope you will not be unwilling to receive (in this poetical dress) neither the besieg'd nor the besiegers, since they come without their vices: for as others have purg'd the stage from corruptions of the art of the drama, so I have endeavour'd to cleanse it from the corruption of manners; nor have I wanted care to render the ideas of greatness and vertue pleasing and familiar.

In old Rome the magistrates did not only protect but exhibit plaies; and, not long since, the two wise cardinals did kindly entertain the great images represented in tragedy by Monsieur Corneille. My lord, it proceeds from the same mind not to be pleas'd with princes on the stage, and not to affect them in the throne; for those are ever most inclin'd to break the mirrour who are unwilling to see the images of such as have just authority over their guilt.

In this poem I have reviv'd the remembrance of that fatal desolation which was permitted by christian princes when they favour'd the ambition of such as defended the diversity of religions (begot by the factions of learning) in Germany; whilst those who would never admit learning into their empire (lest is shlould meddle with religion and intangle it with controversy) did make Rhodes defenceless; which was the only fortify'd academy in christendome where divinity and arms were equally profess'd: I have likewise, for variety, softened the martial encounters between Solyman and the Rhodians, with intermingling the conjugal vertues of Alphonso and Ianthe.

If I shoul proceed, and tell your Lordship of what use theatres have antiently been, and may be now, by heightening the characters of valour, temperance, natural justice, and complacency to governement, I should fall into the ill manners and indiscretion of ordinary dedicators, who go about to instruct those from whose abilities they expect protection. The apprehension of this error makes me hasten to crave pardon for what has been already said by,