ALTEM.  I can forgive you all my Lycidor,
But leaving me, and leaving me for war,
For that, so little argument I find,
My reason makes the fault look more unkind.

Lycidor.  You see my griefs such deep impressions give,
I’d better die than thus afflicted live. 
Yet to those sorrows under which I groan,
Can you still think it fit to add your own?

ALTEM.  ’Tis only you, have your own troubles wrought,
For they alas! are not impos’d but sought;
Did you but credit what you still profess,
That I alone can make your happiness: 
You would not your obedience now decline,
But end by paying it, your griefs and mine.

Footnotes:  1.  Earl of Cork’s True Remembrance. 2.  Morrice’s Memoirs of E. Orrery, chap. 6. 3.  Memoirs of the Earl of Orrery, p. 36. 4.  Carte’s Life of the Duke of Ormond. 5.  Memoirs of the Interregnum, p. 133. 6.  Cox’s History of Ireland, vol. 2. part 2d. p. 16. 7.  Thurloe’s State Papers. 8.  Morrice’s Memoirs chap. 5. 9.  Budgel’s Memoirs of the family of the Boyles. 10.  Collin’s peerage, vol. iv. p. 26. 11.  Love’s Memoirs of the Earl of Orrery. 12.  Memoirs of the Earl of Orrery.

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Richardhead

Was the son of a minister in Ireland, who being killed in the rebellion there in 1641, amongst the many thousands who suffered in that deplorable massacre, our author’s mother came with her son into England, and he having, says Winstanley, been trained up in learning, was by the help of some friends educated at Oxford, in the same college where his father formerly had been a student; but as his circumstances were mean, he was taken away from thence, and bound apprentice to a bookseller in London, but his genius being addicted to poetry, before his time was expired, he wrote a piece called Venus Cabinet unlocked; and afterwards he married and set up for himself, in which condition, he did not long continue, for being addicted to gaming, he ruined his affairs.  In this distress he went over to Ireland, and composed his Hic & Ubique, a noted comedy; and which gained him some reputation.  He then returned to England, reprinted his comedy, and dedicated it to the duke of Monmouth, from whom he received no great encouragement.  This circumstance induced him to reflect, that the life of an author was at once the most dissipated and unpleasing in the world; that it is in every man’s power to injure him, and that few are disposed to promote him.  Animated by these reflexions, he again took a house, and from author resumed his old trade of a bookseller, in which, no doubt he judged right; for while an author (be his genius and parts ever so bright) is employed in the composition of one book, a bookseller may publish twenty; so that in the very nature of things, a bookseller without oppression, a crime which by unsuccessful writers is generally imputed to them, may grow rich, while the most industrious and able author can arrive at no more than a decent competence:  and even to that, many a great genius has never attained.