ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, GEORGE, LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, AND PRELATE OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER. MY LORD, I DID, fome years past, present you with a plain relation of the life of Mr. Richard Hooker, that humble man, to whose memory princes, and the most learned of this nation, have paid a reverence at the mention of his name. And now, with Mr. Hooker's, I present you also the Life of that pattern of primitive piety, Mr George Herbert; and, with his, the Life of Dr. Donne, and your friend Sir Henry Wotton, all reprinted. The two firft were written under your roof; for which reason, if they were worth it, you might justly challenge a Dedication: and indeed, so you might of Dr. Donne's, and Sir Henry Wotton's; because, if I had been fit for this undertaking, it would not have been by acquired learning or study, but by the advantage of forty years friendship, and thereby with hearing and difcourfing with your Lordship, that hath enabled me to make the relation of these lives paffable (if they prove fo) in an eloquent and captious age. And indeed, my Lord, though these relations be well-meant facrifices to the memory of these worthy men ; yet I have fo little confidence in my performance, that I beg pardon for superscribing your name to them; and defire all that know The Life of Bishop Sanderfon was not then written. your your Lordship, to apprehend this not as a Dedication, (at least, by which you receive any addition of honour,) but rather as an humble and a more public acknowledgment of your long continued and your now daily favours to, |