News from Parnassus: Second Century

arises in my soul, which greatly makes me doubt the certainty of the happy outcome of these my labors. It is this: that you, being of the most certain judgment in the censure of any sort of composition, could easily have been deceived in my own things. Great is the reason that thus induces me to doubt, because in the long experience I have of you, many times I have noticed that you become so deeply devoted to those friends of yours whom you know to be in love with the virtues, that the passion of love has even operated so that in their things you have not seen those imperfections that you would have exquisitely noted in the things of others. But if my blame must arise from this overabundance of love from Your Illustrious Lordship V. S. Illustrissima toward me and my things, I render myself certain that those into whose hands these my labors shall fall will remain marveled by seeing that in this age, in which many signal men live who have even reached the shame of making most ignorant people their idols, there is found one who has reached the virtue of so losing himself in loving the followers of good letters original: "buone lettere," referring to the humanities and classical learning, that he has tolerated from me the boldness of putting the reputation of a peer of his into compromise to save my own; they will magnify the excess of Your Illustrious Lordship V. S. Illustrissima, and...