TO THE SPECTABLE MAN, MASTER

AUGUSTINO FURNARIO,

Citizen of Genoa.

HENRICUS CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

OF NETTESHEIM,

Sends greetings.

A large decorative initial letter 'C' at the start of the body text, set within a woodcut border featuring ornate floral and foliage motifs.

As I was considering, most upright Augustino, by what study of meriting well you have made me perpetually indebted to you for grace, with what cult, what veneration, what pledge, or with what industry of wit I might attest this observance of my mind toward you, it was my intention to adorn you with some beautiful and great gift (since you are worthy of the most beautiful and greatest things), and to offer you books from the deepest parts of both divine and human literature, with both the most ornate integrity of speech and the most abundant dignity of subject matter and the weight of most serious sentiments. But since I am far inferior in doctrine and wit to such a great intention of my mind, and I follow that [goal] with a remote step in the eloquence of speaking and the elegance of discourse, I have nothing in the furniture of my wit that I might offer, except for signal ignorance. And my wit itself lies prostrate, cast down by the indignation of my fortune, so much so that from that very indignation I have almost been turned into a dog, like that Trojan Hecuba, and I am of no strength to bless; I remember nothing further than to bite, to bark, to slander, to revile. And thus affected, I wrote in these days a sufficiently ample volume, to which I gave the title On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences, in