TO THECourteous Reader.
Reader,
Before thou goest on further to the perusing of this Work, thou art humbly intreated by the Authour, to forgive him his Anglicisme; for being born a Forreigner, and having had no body to help him to the polishing of it, for several reasons, it cannot be expected he should please thine Ears, so much as he may perhaps do thy Fancy. Every Exotick Plant can hardly become Domestical under one or two Generations: Besides that, the Crabbedness of the Original in his own Idiome, can scarce admit a Polite Eloquency in another. The very AntientEnglishLanguage in this refined Age, is become both obsolete and unintelligible, as we may see inChaucer,Gower, and others. If you adde to this, that the Authours Nation hath been alwayes famous for its Civility to those that were Strangers to their Language, as not onely to abstain from laughing at them when they spoke amiss, but also in redressing them charitably to the best of their power. I may probably expect you will measure me with the same measure, as you would be if you were in my case.
As for the Errataes of the Press, I could not help them, being out of Town most part of the time that the Book was a Printing; when you meet with any, I hope your Charitable Pen will either mend or obliterate them, and not lay another mans fault upon me, who neither for pride nor ostentation undertook this laborious Work, but that I might give some Satisfaction and Recreation to the Learned and Curious, who have had a longing for it ever since its Birth.
Farewell.