For Indeed The Exteriour Habit Of This Our English Politician, To Wit, The Harsh And Vnaffected Stile Of His Substantiall

Verses and the olde dialect of his wordes is such; as the first may seeme to haue bene whistled of

Pans oaten pipe, and the second to haue proceeded from the mother of Euander; but take you off his vtmost weed, and beholde the comelinesse, beautie, and riches which lie hid within his inward sense and sentence, and you shall finde (I wisse) so much true and sound policy, so much delightfull and pertinent history, so many liuely descriptions of the shipping and wares in his time of all the nations almost in Christendome, and such a subtile discouery of outlandish merchants fraud, and of the sophistication of their wares, that needes you must acknowledge, that more matter and substance could in no wise be comprised in so little a roome. [Footnote: The poem here alluded to was written between 1416 and 1438, as appears from the lines:

"For Sigismond, the great Emperour Wich yet reigneth, when he was in this land With King Henryy the fifth" etc.

Sigismund died in 1438, and visited England in 1416.] And notwithstanding (as I said) his stile be vnpolished, and his phrases somewhat out of vse, yet, so neere as the written copies would giue me leaue, I haue most religiously without alteration obserued the same, thinking it farre more conuenient that himselfe should speake, then that I should bee his spokesman, and that the Readers should enioy his true verses, then mine or any other mans fained prose.

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