Page:Monasticon Anglicanum, or, The history of the ancient abbies, and other monasteries, hospitals, cathedral and collegiate churches in England and Wales. With divers French, Irish (IA monasticonanglic00dugd).pdf/7



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T which I here present you is Originally the Product of your own Country, since the Great Artist from whole elaborate and curious hand I CoppyCopy [sic] this Piece in little, owed his Birth and Habitation to Warwickshire. I know not therefore to whom (in the number of my Friends) more properly to dedicate these Collections than to yourself: for thus it is an act of Justice to restore to the proper County (in your Person who represent it) what came from thence at first.

Nothing deterr'd my Presumption in this more than to think I should explode the Imperfections of my Pen to so accurate and excellent a Judgment. A Judgment that has taught you the true use of Foreign Travails, by which you have brought home from the politest Nations of Europe, all their Virtues and Accomplishments, and left behind their Fopperies and Vice. It is this Judgment that has so signalized your Merit in the Eye of your Country, that she has justly fixt her choice on you for one of her Representatives in our Great Senate; and it is the same Judgment that you have since most worthily employ'd in that High and Honourable Assembly, by assisting, and complying with the best Methods and Endeavours for the Publick Good: Or, to use the words of Horace,

Yours are the Publick Cares; that's your noble Province. While I, and those in my inferiour and unactive Station, can only wish Success to the Proceedings of such Good Patriots as your self; Our thoughts are best mploy'd with our own private Business, and inoffensive Studies.