Aphorisms of Hippocrates

TO THE MOST NOBLE AND
MOST AMPLIFIED ESTATES OF
ZEALAND

J. HEURNIUS
dedicates and consecrates this.

Most Noble Men, Most Amplified ESTATES, we see that this is a quality of our nature, that no artist, even if unsuccessful, willingly sees the works that have proceeded from him perish. Wherefore I, too, moved by this common impulse, labor anxiously to breathe vital air into my works. Hence it is that I have studied to ensure that they might run forth from a brevity full of sap into a very long age. But when I was inspecting those works already prepared for the press, and in them saw how thin a thread of wit had woven them together, and how tangled and crippled they limped along, I judged that they needed to be erected upon a new foundation. Nor did I find anything more stable for their support than if they were to go forth into the public eye in your name, Most Amplified ESTATES, who are able to imbue them with vital air and to call my obscurity into brilliant light. And why should I not conceive this confidence in you