Page:The Works of Abraham Cowley - volume 1 (ed. Aikin) (1806).djvu/125



my return lately into England, I met by great accident (for such I account it to be, that any copy of it should be extant any where so long, unless at his house who printed it) a book intituled, "The Iron Age," and published under my name, during the time of my absence. I wondered very much how one who could be so foolish to write so ill verses, should yet be so wise to set them forth as another man's rather than his own; though perhaps he might have made a better choice, and not fathered the bastard upon such a person, whose stock of reputation is, I fear, little enough for maintenance of his own numerous legitimate offspring of that kind. It would have been much less injurious, if it had pleased the author to put forth some of my writings under his own name, rather than his own under