Simonides Redivivus, or the Art of Memory and Oblivion

I foresee both kinds of men opposing me: the latter, because they will not perceive the true and desired meaning from the tables immediately (unless they come having first been taught the foundations of our art); the former, because they opine that no art of memory has ever truly existed, or if it ever did, that it has perished entirely.

When I observed myself to be the object of their darts, I began to think of some supreme patron under whose shadow and protection I might hide. I chose Your Highness above all others, full of hope that I would not be sacrificing a sow to Venus, as the proverb has it, whatever might be the mind of Your Highness toward this art (which is hidden from me). Perhaps you cannot love it; and you certainly cannot hate it, both for other reasons and for the divine talents and virtues of those who cultivated it. Therefore, even if, as I may sing with the poet,

yet I wished to dedicate and consecrate these my labors to Your Highness, under which I also include the attached Mnemonic Nomenclator, so that I might celebrate with a grateful and submissive signification of will that maximum favor and benevolence with which Your Highness has pursued our medico-chemical faculty with a rare and clearly new example.

May God the Greatest and Best, who alone bestows happy governance, and who has the heart of Kings and Princes in His hand, and inclines it where He wills, preserve Your Highness flourishing and surviving for the schools and churches for as long as possible, and may He direct His counsels in such a way that the desired tranquility of our fatherland may be retained, the study of piety may be excited, and this age of ours may depart more and more each day from bodily and dead philosophy to Spiritual and vital philosophy and