The Long-Desired and Promised Chemical-Philosophical Touchstone

Common people love and strive for money, but he despises it and thrusts it away. It is in vain to want to force money upon him. He accepts hardly as much as is required for a needy life. He competes with me in fasting, waking, and in the love for solitude; and often he surpasses me. Through this behavior, he has become as dear to me as if he were my son; and perhaps even dearer than a biological son would be, because the latter, according to the way of our young people, would want to dictate laws to the father, whereas the former directs himself not according to his own will, but according to my wishes, and indeed without any selfish intentions, merely out of love for me, and perhaps also in the hope of becoming better through my company. He came to me two years ago, and would God that he had come earlier; although because of his tender age he could not have come much earlier. He alone has successfully brought to completion the collection of my letters, which I had already completely given up on because of their dispersion, and which four of my friends had tried in vain to complete; and a copy of them you will, as I hope, soon receive, written by his own hand not in such large and magnificent letters as those by which the scribes, or rather the painters of our time, seek to flatter the eyes and really tire them, but with a correct, legible, and pleasing script, in which neither the reader nor the grammarian finds anything to blame *). So that—

*) original Latin: "non vaga quidem, ac luxurianti littera, qualis est scriptorum, seu verius pictorum nostri temporis longe oculos mulcens, prope autem afficiens, ac fatigans, quasi ad aliud, quam ad legendum sit inventa, et non, ut grammaticorum princeps ait, littera quasi litigera dicta sit, sed alia quadam..." Translation of the Latin: ...not with a wandering or luxurious letter, such as that of the scribes, or rather the painters of our time, which soothes the eyes from afar but affects and tires them up close, as if it were invented for something other than reading, and not, as the prince of grammarians says, called a letter as if it were a "litigera" quarrelsome thing, but with another certain...