This, at least, my lord, I may justly plead, that if I have not performed so well as I think I have, yet I have used my best endeavours to excel myself.  One disadvantage I have had; which is, never to have known or seen my lady:  and to draw the lineaments of her mind, from the description which I have received from others, is for a painter to set himself at work without the living original before him:  which, the more beautiful it is, will be so much the more difficult for him to conceive, when he has only a relation given him of such and such features by an acquaintance or a friend, without the nice touches, which give the best resemblance, and make the graces of the picture.  Every artist is apt enough to flatter himself (and I amongst the rest) that their own ocular observations would have discovered more perfections, at least others, than have been delivered to them:  though I have received mine from the best hands, that is, from persons who neither want a just understanding of my lady’s worth, nor a due veneration for her memory.

Dr Donne, the greatest wit, though not the greatest poet of our nation, acknowledges, that he had never seen Mrs Drury, whom he has made immortal in his admirable “Anniversaries.”  I have had the same fortune, though I have not succeeded to the same genius.  However, I have followed his footsteps in the design of his panegyric; which was to raise an emulation in the living, to copy out the example of the dead.  And therefore it was, that I once intended to have called this poem “The Pattern:”  and though, on a second consideration, I changed the title into the name of the illustrious person, yet the design continues, and Eleonora is still the pattern of charity, devotion, and humility; of the best wife, the best mother, and the best of friends.

And now, my lord, though I have endeavoured to answer your commands; yet I could not answer it to the world, nor to my conscience, if I gave not your lordship my testimony of being the best husband now living:  I say my testimony only; for the praise of it is given you by yourself.  They who despise the rules of virtue both in their practice and their morals, will think this a very trivial commendation.  But I think it the peculiar happiness of the Countess of Abingdon to have been so truly loved by you while she was living, and so gratefully honoured after she was dead.  Few there are who have either had, or could have, such a loss; and yet fewer who carried their love and constancy beyond the grave.  The exteriors of mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stints of common husbands:  and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be mourned with hypocrisy, and forgot with ease.  But you have distinguished yourself from ordinary lovers, by a real and lasting grief for the deceased; and by endeavouring to raise for her the most durable monument, which is that of verse.  And so it would have proved, if the workman had been equal to the