EPISTLE.

these first fruits as from an inheritance that I hold from his hand. And I would not want to show myself ungrateful toward the so excellent Monsieur de Baïf, expert in languages and all sorts of Poetry, Greek, Latin, and French: who by his erudition and doctrine, by his long and diverse reading, and his prompt and happy judgment in restoring the most rugged passages; has untied for me so many knots more difficult than the Gordian ones; which without him I would perhaps have been forced to cut short; or leave them more entangled than they were. FINALLY Philostratus sketches for us, as he himself testifies in the preface of this work, certain themes and commonplaces in the form of Chries preliminary rhetorical exercises or essays, to exercise youth in knowing how to discourse and write appropriately, not only about paintings, but about infinite other beautiful things for which he has curiously sought the suitable words, adapted to all sorts of professions and trades; in which he shows himself marvelously versed and instructed, as if he had done his apprenticeship in all of them, and passed through each degree until the final masterpiece and mastery: which is indeed required for most of those who take it upon themselves to put hand to pen; if they do not wish at every turn to make a clerk's step a blunder or oversight, and let out something unseemly and absurd. I therefore, following his example, have also proposed for myself these three same ends: to touch upon everything that has come to my memory concerning the art of painting: to untie for you as much as I could the ancient Greek Mythology: and to accumulate by the same means a wealth of terms and phrases: some entirely new, and a bit bold in truth, indeed perhaps too licentious for solute oration prose writing: others that I have as if unearthed, already smelling of their rancidity and mold: with a manner of language (someone might say,