To the virtuously noble and truly honourable lady, the Lady Catherine Mohun, wife to the Lord Warwick Mohun, baron of Okehampton, my highly honoured Lord.

May it please your Ladyship,

Madam, emboldened by your accustomed candour and unmerited favours to things of the like nature, though disproportioned worth (because this Excellency seems to contract those perfections her sex hath been invested with, which are as essential to your Ladyship, as light to the sun), I presumed to secure this innocent orphan from the thunder shocks of the present blasting age under the safe protecting wreath of your name, which (I am confident) the virtues of none can more justly challenge than those of your Ladyship, who alone may seem to quicken the lifeless scene and to demonstrate its possibility, reducing fables into practics, by making as great honour visible in the mirror of your daily practice. Your pardon, Madam, for daring to offer such adulterate metals to so pure a mine, for making the shadow a present to the substance; the thoughts of which was an offence, but the performance, a crime beyond the hopes of pardon. When my fate had cast me on the first, I esteemed myself unsafe (with the politician) should I not attempt the latter, securing one error by soaring at a greater. But my duller eyes endured not the proof of so glorious a test and the waxed juncture of my ill contrived feathers melt me into the fear of a fall. Therefore (with the most desperate offenders) I cast myself on the mercy of the bench and, since I have so clement a judge as yourself, do not wholly despair of absolution, by reason my penitential acknowledgment atones part of the offence, and your remission of the whole will eternally oblige,

Madam,

The humblest of your Ladyship’s servants,

Alexander Gough.