On the Names of Plants

...lation: or who could have been a more legitimate patron for it against captious critics than Your Highness? Your Highness undoubtedly remembers that the German work, begun and completed within Your Highness’s dominion, was dedicated to that most illustrious Princess and Lady, the Lady Elizabeth, descended from the most renowned family of the Prince of the Hessians, the mother of Your Highness and a Princess most distinguished in every kind of virtue, when it was first published. To whom, therefore, ought the same work, now rendered into Latin, more justly be dedicated than to Your Highness, especially as you are uncommonly proficient in the Latin tongue? Furthermore, since Tragus is a citizen of Your Highness, and as it is the particular duty of leading men to defend their citizens, even their offspring (among which these productions of scholars, as it were, and these modest labors ought rightly to be numbered) not only possess the right of citizenship from their prince, but also by the best right hope for and expect protection from the same.

As for me, although I am not a citizen of Your Highness, I nevertheless not only favor your citizens—as is shown by whatever service I performed in translating the commentaries of Hieronymus Tragus—but I also venerate and admire the signal distinctions of Your Highness. And since noble-minded men have always considered the zeal and inclination of anyone toward them to be worthy of praise, I hope that this token of my mind, with which I am disposed toward Your Highness, will be welcome. Nor do I doubt that, by reason of the remarkable benevolence with which Your Highness embraces both polite literature and liberal studies, as well as their practitioners and admirers, you will also hold this work in the highest esteem. In so doing, you will bind to yourself by an undying favor not only us, but also all those devoted to botany, for whom these things were written and translated. But lest I [detain] Your Highness more than is just...