The Ursine Rose, or the Sun

I dedicate to YOU, MAGNANIMOUS DUKE, in veneration: in the adorning and polishing of which, that I might do the WORK, you provided great and liberal expense. By this huge benefit, you truly proved yourself a beneficent PRINCE; and you have bound me to YOU AND YOUR MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILY with a new and eternal tie; and you have obligated, most closely, the Letters and the Learned, who are about to capture either fruit or some taste of this. For there will be, I think, not a few whom, to this day, either blind error or ignorance of this PHENOMENON has exercised, led far from the truth and the path of the true: if they are perhaps led back to the way through me, they will owe all grace to YOUR ROSE: they will proclaim openly; that just as in fables THAT [character] by a bitten Rose leaf shed the Arcadian beast referring to the myth of Apuleius's Golden Ass, where the protagonist is restored to human form by eating roses; so they themselves, by the benefit of the URSINE ROSE, have dissipated the error of their ignorance.

I finish the letter with Vows. May GOD keep YOU, ILLUSTRIOUS OF PRINCES, and YOUR GLORIOUS house, safe for the public good. Rome, from the Professed House of the Society of JESUS. M. DC. XXIX. July 5th original: "III. Non. Iulij.".

A heart-shaped decorative woodcut tailpiece features symmetrical scrolling foliage and floral motifs.