Page:Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield.djvu/75

Rh Robert Burns gave the same opinion in his "A man's a man for a' that," when he asked, "What though on homely fare we dine?"

Altogether it is surely to supply a real desideratum thus to collect the Poems of Richard Barnfield, and, without asserting 'great' claims for him, to count on his admission to the glorious company of England's "Makers." I say no more, for in the words of dear old Thomas Fuller, in his dedication of Joseph's Party-coloured Coat (1640),—"First, I account it beneath my calling to speak anything above the truth: secondly, because it is needless. Let deformed faces be beholden to the painter; Art hath nothing to do where Nature hath prevented it."

III. . Our principle has been—as invariably—to reproduce the text of the Author in absolute integrity. The punctuation especially, but for this, we would have corrected in the text preferably. In the Notes and Illustrations errors of the original are recorded and elucidations given. Thither the Reader is referred for anything else requiring to be said. And so "gentle Reader" look lovingly on the volume put into your hands.

Care not how lowe your praises lye; In labourers' ballats oft more pyety God finds than in Te Deum's mellodye."

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