Page:Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.djvu/13

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introductory remarks.
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in these books so witty, pithy, and substantial matter, for the easing, remedying, and patiently suffering of all manner of griefs and sorrows that may possibly encumber any man, by any manner or kind of tribulation, whether their tribulation proceed from any inward temptation or ghostly enemy, the devil, or any outward temptation of the world, threatening to bereave or spoil us of our goods, lands, honour, liberty, and freedom, by grievous and sharp punishment, and finally of our life withal, by any painful, exquisite, and cruel death; against all which he doth so wonderfully and effectually prepare, defend, and arm the reader, that a man cannot desire or wish any thing of any more efficacy or importance thereunto to be added. In the which book his principal drift and scope was to stir and prepare the minds of Englishmen manfully and courageously to withstand, and not to shrink at the imminent and open persecution which he foresaw, and immediately followed against the unity of the Church, and the Catholic faith of the same; albeit full wittily and warily, that the books might safer go abroad, he doth not expressly meddle with these matters, but covereth the matter under a name of an Hungarian, and of the persecution of the Turks in Hungary, and of the book translated out of the Hungarian tongue into Latin, and then into the English tongue."[1] And such golden consolations and encouragements, and genuine philosophy, were inscribed "with a coal;" his enemies having enhanced the pains of incarceration by depriving him of all ordinary writing materials!

The first edition of the Dialogue of Comfort was printed at London by Richard Tottel, 1553, in quarto. The next, from which our present reprint is obtained, at Antwerp, in 1573, in 16mo.: and again, at the same city, in 1574 and 1578. The portrait in this first Antwerp edition was unknown to Granger and Bromley.

The "Right Honourable and Excellent Ladie," to whom Fowler dedicated the work, was Jane, second daughter of Sir William Dormer (father of the first Lord

Dormer of Wenge), by his first wife Mary, daughter to

a 2

  1. ↑ P. 340.
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