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- From The Husband (1614), ‘To the Worthy
Author’
From The Husband (1614), ‘To the Worthy
Author’
[From The Husband, 1614]
To the Worthy Author on The Husband
It fits not only him that makes a
book
To see his work be good, but that he
look
Who are his
test, and
what their judgement is,
Lest a false praise do make their dotage
his.
I do not feel that ever yet I had
5
The art of uttering wares if they were
bad,
Or skill of making
matches in my life:
And therefore I commend unto the Wife,
That went before, a Husband. She, I’ll swear,
Was worthy of a good one; and this here
10
I know for such, as (if my word will
weigh)
She need not blush upon the marriage
day.
To the
Worthy Author on
The Husband First printed in The Husband (entered in the Stationers’ Register 1
July 1614, and printed with a dedicatory epistle dated 19 June 1614), an
anonymous sequel and companion piece to Thomas Overbury’s The Wife (see ‘Somerset’, 4.222–3, 12n.) [Editor: Colin Burrow]
3 test the
commendatory poets who assess its value.
6 uttering
selling (
OED, †1), with a pun on ‘speaking out
[to sell
]’.
7 making
matches (Jonson is commending this work as itself a husband to
The Wife.)
11 weigh have
authority.