TO THE MOST EXCELLENT AND VERY REVEREND LORD AND DOCTOR,

GEORGE MYLIUS Georg Müller (1548–1607) was a prominent Lutheran theologian and professor at Wittenberg who served as superintendent and chancellor. OF AUGSBURG,

CHANCELLOR OF THE ACADEMY OF WITTENBERG,

GIORDANO B. BRUNO OF NOLA

Concerning the proposed field of the hunt, most excellent Lord, I look around and see countless people laboring in vain. Some of them—following the futile instructions of bombastic grammarians (who, under 10 titles of the "art of invention," of "judgment," and of all other things—if it please the gods!—never cease to soil endless pages with filth)—consult those misguided farmers who would be better suited to cultivating other fields alongside ox-drivers. Others, hunting for monstrous birds by some literary method or other, lean on the fragile branches of a sapless tree; when these branches fail and are snatched away (as 15 is especially necessary), they fall "methodically" into a stony field. There, they become the miserable prey of those very birds they were trying to catch—namely, those empty thoughts which brood over the chicks of a perversely disposed ignorance in its nest. Some, with a certain servile and flattering compliance, 20 boast of having those men as their leaders who blow the hunting horn not so well in the games of children as in the open and [august...] The word "augu-" is broken across the page; it likely completes as augusto, meaning noble or venerable. of philoso-