The Surveyor in Foure Bookes

...either, and yet will disburse many thousands in a purchase without the certain knowledge of either quantity, quality, or value thereof (and these are those which are called "penny-wise," etc.). Whereby it often happens (as I have often known) that a valuable purchase being made, within few weeks after, the money has been raised from the woods, and the lands perhaps immediately sold for much more than the money disbursed; and the same again vented sold at the third hand has yielded a double value: and all this unseen and unsurveyed, with what disadvantage to the first vendor, I will leave to the consideration of my young master, who has thus offended in selling all, and rests now in repentance, with full resolution not to offend in the like. And the like have I known of a purchase made, when a moiety half of the charge could scarcely be raised.

But to spend time to this purpose would be to little end, and therefore will I end this purpose; only entreating you, gentle reader, that as I have thus employed my idle hours to find you hours of employment, if you reap either pleasure or profit by these my pains, to afford me your good opinion (for Virtus laudata crescit, & honos alit artes Original Latin: "Virtue grows when praised, and honor nourishes the arts."), which is all I crave.

From my lodging, at the house of Mr. Roger Byrgis, against Salisbury-house-gate in the Strand, this sixth of November, 1616.