To Her Grace, the duchess of Monmouth.

It is the greatest and chiefest aim, Madam, of most men still to choose out the highest, loveliest and fairest objects as may best agree with their intentions; thus, the pious and devout are in a perpetual contemplation of heaven, thinking that the fittest place about which they can or ought to busy their religious thoughts, the glories of the one running in a just parallel with the meditations of the other. Now, pardon me, Madam, if the divine perfections providence has bestowed upon you have made me thus boldly aspire to dedicate this poem to Your Grace, as being the only person with whose nature such sacred history best accords; and I must needs allege too, Your Grace deserves the name of beautiful and that not only for the excellent proportion and lineaments of body, as for the intrinsic perfections of your mind and virtues of your soul, which are so sweetly joined that you may justly challenge to yourself the title of a visible divinity. But my greatest fear is, last while I address myself to Your Grace, like a mistaken zealot, I should approach the true deity with a wrong worship. What was said of Greece may be now confirmed here, that all their beauties there could make but one Venus. You, like that goddess, bare away the golden prize, whilst all the rest stand neglected by and envy at your glory; therefore lest any should think I derogate from them, by giving you your due commendations, or at least you yourself should think I flatter, I must aver thus much in my own defence that your perfections are so divinely rare, you exceed the very name of flattery, for what is adulation in others is but your real character, and to diminish what I have said would rather prove abusive than a fawning speech. And I am so far from extinguishing others' lustre by yours that like the sun, you rather distribute your diffusive beams on all inferior lights than take any rays from them and that too without diminution to yourself. Had Your Grace lived in the old world, you would not only have made an addition to those that were saved in the ark, but even have prevented the destruction of the whole. For so pious and sincere, so importunate are all your devotions as what was spoke by the two angels to Lot would have been said to you, that they could not be destroyed so long as you was there. Or like Astraea, Your Grace must have been forced to have left the confines of this world and in a cloud of incense flown to heaven. Nor need we doubt but, like her, being a star on earth, you would have made as bright a constellation there. So sweet and affable is all your conversation, so universal is your charity and bounty and so charming are your smiles that all who know you must admire you and bless themselves that you are now alive, though in an age almost as bad as that. As it was the general custom amongst the Jews to present their first fruits to heaven, so I hope Your Grace will pardon this ambition in me for laying this my firstborn fancy on your altar, for without your protection I may doubt the insolence of a censorious age. But so long as your seraphic form guards the door of the ark, I need not fear what the malice of a hell of critics can do against it. But rather am assured by your patronage to view it safely sailing through all their storms to the Happy Mount, where when they are all securely landed, I shall not think them more happy than I am in subscribing myself,

Madam,

Your Grace’s most humble, most obedient and most devoted servant,

Edward Ecclestone.