potent rulers, it has ever been honoured and rewarded, we may all be the more influenced and impelled to adorn the world with works, infinite as to number and surpassing in their excellence,— whence, embellished by our labours, it may place us on that eminence which it has maintained those ever admirable and most celebrated spirits.
Accept these my labours, therefore, with a friendly mind ; whatsoever they may be, I have anxiously conducted the work to its close, for the glory of art, and to the honour of artists ; receive it then as a sure token and pledge of my heart, which is of nothing more desirous than of your greatness and glory. In the which, I being received by you into your Society (wherefore I am both thankful to you, and rejoiced no little as for mine own part), it appears to me that I always, in a certain sort, participate.
