THE PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR
TO HIS SONNE, FAUSTINUS
And unto the Readers of this Book
THAT I to thee some joyous jests
may show in gentle gloze,
And frankly feed thy bended eares
with passing pleasant prose:
So that thou daine in seemly sort
this wanton booke to view,
That is set out and garnisht fine,
with written phrases new.
I will declare how one by hap
his humane figure lost,
And how in brutish formed shape,
his loathed life he tost.
And how he was in course of time
from such a state unfold,
Who eftsoone turn'd to pristine shape
his lot unlucky told.
HAT and who he was attend a while, and you shall understand that it was
even I, the writer of mine own Metamorphosie and strange alteration of
figure. Hymettus, Athens, Isthmia, Ephire Tenaros, and Sparta, being
fat and fertile soiles (as I pray you give credit to the bookes of more
everlasting fame) be places where myne antient progeny and linage did
sometime flourish: there I say, in Athens, when I was yong, I went first
to schoole.
