"
But I am not sure that it was altogether a noble or at all a rational
modesty which made him utter the avowal or the vaunt: "It never was any
great ambition in me, to be in this kind voluminously read." For, eight
years after this well-known passage was in print, when publishing a
"Chronographicall History of all the Kings, and memorable passages of
this Kingdome, from Brute to the Reigne of our Royall Soveraigne King
Charles," he offers, on arriving at the accession of Elizabeth, "an
apologie of the Author" for slurring or skipping the record of her life
and times in a curious passage which curiously omits as unworthy of
mention his dramatic work on the subject, while complacently enumerating
his certainly less valuable and memorable other tributes to the great
queen's fame as follows: "To write largely of her troubles, being a
princesse, or of her rare and remarkable Reigne after she was Queen, I
should but feast you with dyet twice drest: Having my selfe published a
discourse of the first: from her cradle to her crowne; and in another
bearing Title of the nine worthy Women: she being the last of the rest
in time and place; though equall to any of the former both in religious
vertue, and all masculine magnanimity.
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