“To stuffe a preface with praise of this boke, or with exhorting you to reding of it, were in a matter not doubtfull to take fond peine not nedefull.”

Refusing empty puffery where the book's use is already plain · Printer's preface to a law-book edition

• Books
• Honesty
• Prefaces

“How unperfect the books of the laws of England were before, what price the scarceness had raised, the most part marvelously mangled, and no small part no where to be gotten.”

On restoring legal texts that scarcity and bad copying had ruined · Printer's preface to gentlemen studious of the laws of England

• Books
• Law
• Work

“And I exhort the vnlearned, by reding to learne to be more skilfull, and to purge that swinelike grossenesse, that maketh the swete maierome not to smell to their delight.”

Urging the untrained reader to refine taste through verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Education
• Reading
• Taste

“If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile remoued from the rude skill of common eares: I aske help of the learned to defend their learned frendes, the authors of this work.”

Asking cultivated readers to stand up for elevated English style · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Learning
• Readers
• Style

“And for this point (good reder) thine own profit and pleasure, in these presently, and moe hereafter, shal answere for my defence.”

Letting the reader's gain stand as the printer's justification · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Pleasure
• Profit
• Readers

“It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the vngentle horders vp of such treasure have heretofore envied thee.”

Justifying print as public service against private hoarding of courtly verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Freedom
• Poetry
• Readers

“That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as the rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly.”

Claiming English as equal to Latin and Italian for lyric eloquence · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• England
• Language
• Poetry

“That to have well written in verse, yea and in small parcels, deserveth great praise, the works of divers Latines, Italians, and other, do prove sufficiently.”

Defending short lyric as a form worthy of the same honour given to classical and Italian verse · Preface, The Printer to the Reader, Songes and Sonettes (1557)

• Language
• Poetry
• Praise