artes translated owt of Latine and other toonges into Englysshe. And it is not unknowen unto your Honour that the Latins receaving bothe the science of philosophie and phisike of the Grekes, do still for the most parte in all ther translacions use the Greke names, insomuche that, for the better understonding of them, one Otto Brumfelsius, a learned man, hathe writen a large booke intiteled, Onomasticon Medicinæ where he hathe these woordes, Res ipsas atque artium vocabula, scite, apposite, designateque efferre, atque ad Polycleti regulam (quod aiunt) exprimere, res est non minus difficilis quam gloriosa. Quo, nullum studii genus majori constat molestia. Id quod in causa esse reor, quia hodie tam pauci in ea palestra sese exerceant, &c. Agen, it is not unknowen unto your honour that ons all toonges were barbarous and needie, before the knowleage of things browght in plentie of woordes and names; wherby it maye well appeare that men, in the first age of the worlde, had a shorte language consistinge of fewe woordes, which ever after increased by the knowleage and invention of thinges. Exercise also maketh suche woordes familier, which at the first were difficulte to be understode; for children at the first (as saithe Aristotle) caule all men fathers; but shortely after by exercise caule them by there names. And I have learned by experience that the maryners use manye Englysse woordes, which were as unknowen unto me as the Chaldean toonge before I was conversant with them. It maye therefore suffice that the woordes and termes of artes and sciences be knowen to the professours therof, as partely by experience and partely by the helpe of dictionaries describing them per proprium genus et differentiam, as the logitians teache, and as Georgius Agricola useth to do in the Germayne toonge, which, as well in that parte of philosophic as in all other, was barbarous and indigent before it was by longe experience browght to perfection. But not to trouble your honour any longer with this matter, one thinge remayneth wherof I wolde gladlye have certified your honour at my last being at the courte at Grenewich, if I might have had convenient accesse unto yow; And this is, that, perceavinge your honour to take pleasure in the wonderfull woorkes of arte and nature (wherin doubtlesse shyneth the sparke of the divine spirite that God hathe gyven you) I was then mynded to have delyvered unto your honour this philosophicall booke, wherin is described (as appeareth in folio ij.) so excellent and precious an experiment, wrought by arte to the similitude of the universall frame of the worlde, made by the omnipotent and greate God of nature, that I beleve the like was never doonne synse the creacion of the worlde.
B 2
