Excerpt from Cowley's Prose Works: With Introduction and Notes This therefore being laid down as a certain foundation, that we must not content ourselves with that inheritance of knowledge which is left us by the labour and bounty of our ancestors, but seek to improve those very grounds and adde to them new and greater purchases; it remains to be considered by what means we are most likely to attain the ends of this vertuous covetousness. 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.