Digital Donne: the Online Variorum
  The 1654 Prose Letters Letter 92, cont. (p.255) |
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it. I ever thought the study of it my best entertainment and pastime, but I have no ambition, nor design upon the Stile. Of my Anniversaries the fault which I acknow- ledge in my selfe, is to have descended to print any thing in Verse, which though it have excuse, even in our times, by example of men, which one would thinke should as little have done it, as I; yet I confesse I wonder how I declined to it, and doe not pardon my self. But for the other part of the imputation, of having said so much, my de- fence is, that my purpose was to say as well as I could: for since I never saw the Gentle- woman, I cannot be understood to have bound my selfe to have spoken just Truth: but I would not be thought to have gone about to praise any body in rime, except I tooke such a Person, as might be capable of all that I could say. If any of those La- dies think that Mistris Drury was not so, let that Ladie make her selfe fit for all the those praises in the Booke, and it shall be hers. Nothing is farther from colour or [CW: ground] |
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