JUSTUS LIPSIUS
To the
READER,
Touching the design and End of this
TREATISE.
Reader,
I am not ignorant of those new judgments and censures I am likely to undergo in this new way of writing: Partly, from such as will be surprized with the unexpected profession of wisdom from him, whom they believed had only been conversant in the more pleasing and delightful studies; and partly from such as will despise and undervalue all that can be said in these matters, after what the ancients have written. To both these; it is for my concern, and no less for thine, that I should briefly reply. The first sort of persons seem to me to miscarry in two most different respects: in their care, and their carelesness. In the former that they assume to themselves a liberty of enquiring into the actions and studies of others: in the latter, that their enquiries are yet so overly and superficial For (that I may give them an account of me) the Hills and Springs of the Muses did never so
