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A large rectangular woodcut headpiece with symmetrical ornamental designs featuring scrolling acanthus leaves, floral patterns, and a central circular motif containing a flower.

THE WORK’S

ORIGIN AND SCOPE

INTRODUCTORY DECLARATION.

The European Reader will, I hope, grant us pardon if throughout this entire work—but especially here while we are laying, as it were, the foundations of the whole—we pursue many matters with great care, and indeed more minutely and at greater length than the sharp minds of many might desire, who, being as they are, are perhaps also fond of brevity. For although we certainly desire our labors original: "lucubrationem," literally "work done by lamp-light," implying late-night scholarly effort. to please these readers, and indeed hope they will not be unpleasing to the learned curiosity of many (especially since we are dealing with such a great and refined antiquity, so far removed from their own eyes and lands), yet we must state this clearly once and for all: our purpose is not so much to serve the delight and curiosity of those living in Europe, as it is to serve the utility of those who sail from Europe to bring the light of the Gospel to these most distant lands. Therefore, we have deemed a certain prolixity Prolixity: The quality of being long-winded or using more words than necessary.—which might otherwise be considered a fault—to be not only worthy of pardon but plainly necessary in the face of such great obscurity concerning this concise original: "Laconicæ," referring to the Laconians or Spartans, known for their brief, pithy speech. Couplet is describing the dense and difficult nature of the Chinese language. and foreign people. We believe we must take account of even the smallest details, all the more so because we have chosen to carry a torch not only for this explanation, but for all those which others may hereafter undertake in this field, and to lay those foundations which will support this structure, however much by the work of others thereafter...