Adagiorum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami epitome

the sense of the matters, and in both idioms, a much more elegant ornamentation of words. For how much labor we wished to be spent on this present edition for your benefit, the truth of the fact will be most clear even to one who is unwilling and plainly blind to such things, through the attentive reading and noting of the errors of the others. For the erroneous reading of them so stirred up so many difficulties of things and words in a mind otherwise intent on many other things, that one could scarcely, or indeed barely, find a certain number of the errors original: τῶν σφαλμάτων in those notes; much less was it granted to reach some certain end of them by a good means. If you look at the title on the front, painted with many enticements of words, you have gold-covered mountains promised to you; but if you examine the thing itself diligently inside and out for the deeper marrow of your genius, you will find nothing prepared for you in the end but mere coals.