To the most excellent and most illustrious princess, Anne, duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, wife to the most illustrious and high-born prince, James, duke of Monmouth.

May it please your Grace,

Since the great characters and subjects of serious plays, are representations of the past glories of the world, the arrogance of an epistle dedicatory may pretend to some justice, in offering the heroic stories of past ages to their hands, who are the ornaments of the present. Once Persia was the mistress of the earth, the royal seat of the monarchs of the Universe. Then, as that God, the Sun, which they adored, lends his kind ‘rays’ to all lesser lights; so all the tributary glories of inferior princes shined by reflection from the Persian crown. But now that sovereignty must cease and the eastern monarch Cambyses can pretend to no greatness of his own, but comes to borrow glories from the Western world, in seeking a patronage from your favourable goodness. The same Cambyses whom history has represented to be a blasphemer of the gods, a profaner of religion and a defacer of temples, is by your power become a convert and humbly pays his devotion to that divinity, to whose protection he commits himself and fortune. But whilst I thus boldly proceed to dedicate this trifle to your Grace, forget to ask pardon for the meanness of the offering and the confidence of him that offers it, crime unpardonable, were not your mercy as signal as your other virtues. For when kind Heaven honours the world with some worthy and illustrious person, in which rank your Grace must claim an eminent place, who, besides your late affinity, are allied to that royal race, to which England owes its three last monarchs. Heaven, I say, besides the great souls, high spirits and noble thoughts it lends such persons, endues them too with more familiar virtues, as courtesy, generosity and a condescension to entertain the addresses of inferior mankind and to smile on the endeavours of the meanest of their subjects and admirers. Else they would be forced, like planets, to move in a sphere alone and greatest monarchs, should they admit of none below them, would make their palaces but solitary prisons. The assurance therefore of these virtues, which particularly possess so large a seat in your heroic, breast, animate me to present this poem to your hands, that it may take sanctuary there, where in its infancy it received protection. As he that’s born under some happy planet, owes the success of his whole life to the predominance of that kinder star that ruled at his nativity. The entertainment you gave it in loose sheets, when it first saw light, encourages me to this presumption, now in its riper growth, to devote it wholly to yourself and under that title to stile it happy. Since thus guarded, I dare expose it to the world, and stand in less awe of censures, when your influence protects it, for, as that timorous pilot, in a storm, was condemned for fearing shipwreck when his vessel carried Caesar; this poem can fear no dangers when it carries your name for its defence. But besides the fortunate and glorious advantages this piece may justly challenge from the favour of so indulgent a patroness, it entitles to this happiness, the opportunity this dedication gives me, of writing myself,

Madam,

Your Grace’s most humble and most obedient servant,

Elkanah Settle.