If any quarrel at the Oeconomy, or Structure of these Poems, many of them being Sonnets, Canzons, Madrigals, &c., objecting that none of our great Men, either Mr. Waller, Mr. Cowley, or Mr. Dryden, whom it was most proper to have followed, have ever stoop'd to any thing of this sort; I shall very readily acknowledge, that being sensible of my own Weakness and Inability of ever attaining to the performance of one thing equal to the worst piece of theirs, it easily disswaded me from that attempt, and put me on this; which is not without President [sic]; For many eminent Persons have published several things of this nature, and in this method, both Translations and Poems of their own; As the famous Mr. Spencer, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Richard Fanshaw, Mr. Milton, and some few others; The success of all which, in these things, I must needs say, cannot much be boasted of; and though I have little reason after it, to expect Credit from these my slight Miscellanies, yet has it not discouraged me from adventuring on what my Genius prompted me to....