Dialexis de novae et prius incognitae stellae inusitatae magnitudinis & splendidissimi luminis apparitione, & de eiusdem stellae vero loco constituendo ...

I, however, as often as some time remains for me from the labors of my vocation, I have been accustomed (let boasting be absent from my words) to consecrate all of it to honest studies: and as often as boredom of one single and long-continued reading has begun to take hold of me, I attempt to drive it away and shake it off by changing to another kind, or by some other meditation. For just as a variety of foods and dishes, even when the stomach is full, stimulates the appetite: so the variety and permutation of reading excites a certain new desire and certain new movements in the minds of men: so that another labor of the mind seems to be, as it were, the rest of the former, and the enjoyment of a new pleasure. But especially does the repetition of those studies affect us to which we were dedicated as youths: among which the disciplines of Mathematics claim the first place for themselves: for I taught these in several schools: and almost alone, if the truth must be told, some twenty-five years ago, I preserved that [study] in this Archgymnasium of your Majesty: and I assisted with my own study and labor, however small, so that it might be continued without interruption to this very day. For when I was the only auditor of the most famous man, D. Andreas Perlachius, left for nearly an entire year: and others, who at that time were hearing him together with me, had either departed from life or had moved elsewhere for the sake of studies, among whom was Georgius Drascouitius, now the most Reverend Bishop of Zagreb, etc., whom I name for the sake of honor and my perpetual regard toward him: but I also knew that I had to move elsewhere for the sake of Medicine: to which I was even then beginning to devote myself, by hearing professors most famous in the use of the art, Franciscus Emericus and Wolfgang Lazius, and others: yet so that the study of Mathematics would not be completely silenced in that city, and the Lyceum rendered deaf, I taught privately in the Bursa called the Lamb: and I was preparing the minds of many and exciting them, so that they might be fit to hear Perlachius: of whom (as I said) I was left the only auditor in Mathematics. Nor had that labor of mine turned out unsuccessfully: for I left behind me, when I subsequently departed, five auditors myself.