TO THE MOST EXCELLENT AND LEARNED
BOTH ORATOR AND POET,
MAISTER GABRIEL HARVEY,
His very special and singular good friend E. K. commendeth the good liking of this his good labour, and the patronage of the new Poet.
Uncouth, unkiss’d, said the old famous poet
Chaucer: whom for his excellency and wonderful skill in making, his scholar Lidgate, a worthy scholar of so excellent a maister , calleth the loadstar of our language: and whom our Colin Clout in his Æglogue, calleth Tityrus the god of shepheards, comparing him to the worthiness of the Roman Tityrus, Virgil. Which proverb, mine own good friend M. Harvey, as in that good old poet it served well Pandar’s purpose for the bolstering of his bawdy brocage, so very well taketh place in this our new Poet, who for that he is uncouth (as said Chaucer) is unkiss’d, and unknown to most men, is regarded but of a few. But I doubt not, so soon as his name shall come into the knowledge of men, and his worthiness be sounded in the trump of Fame, but that he shall be not only kiss’d, but also beloved of all, embraced of the most, and wonder’d at of the best. No less, I think, deserveth his wittinessix
