Excerpt from The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom: An Ancient Interlude; To Which Are Added Illustrations of Shakespeare and the Early English Drama I will most thankful be; and thanks, to men Of noble minds, is honourable meed. And at the same time that a noble example is given to the owners of literary treasures throughout the country, the discovery of the ancient interlude of the Contract of a Marriage between Wit and Wisdom affords a striking lesson to literary antiquaries to pause before they substantiate conjectures and probabilities as matters of fact, and hesitate at assertions respecting the identity or non-existence of mss. And rare books. We are constantly in the habit of seeing a notice to the effect that such a book or ms. Is unique. Time passes, and two or three other Copies are exhibited. In fact, no book can be safely SO designated, and it is equally dangerous to assert that any particular work never existed, merely because no Copy of it happens to be known. We have by no means come to the conclusion of our literary discoveries, which of late years have been too numerous and important, overthrowing theories and correcting errors, not to teach additional caution even to the most scrupulously careful. It must be remembered that publications of an antiquarian character are more peculiarly subject to slight mistakes, and Should there fore be visited with some allowance for their liability to error. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.