May it please your Highness;
What the Great Philosopher has observed of Men's Bodies is, upon so much stronger reasons, true of their minds, by how much our intellectual maturity is more lingering and sluggish than our natural: that the too early conceptions and issues of them do usually prove but weak and unuseful. And we shall seldom find, but that those venturous blossoms, whose over-hasty obedience to the early spring does anticipate their proper season, and put forth too soon, do afterwards for their former boldness suffer from the injury of severer weather, except at least some happy shelter or more benign influence redeem them from danger. The like infelicity I find myself obnoxious to at this time. For I know not out of what disposition of mind, whether out of love of learning (for love is venturous, and conceives difficult things easier than they are) or whether out of a resolution to take some account from myself of those few years wherein I had then been planted in the happiest of all soils, the schools of learning; whether upon these, or any other inducements, so it has happened, that I long since have taken boldness in the minority of my studies to write this ensuing treatise: that before I adventured on the endeavor of knowing other things, I might first try whether I knew myself. Lest I should justly incur the censure, which that sour philosopher passed upon grammarians: that they were better acquainted with the evils of Ulysses than with their own. This hasty resolution having produced so untimely an issue, it happened by some accident to be like Moses in his infancy exposed to the seas. Where I made no other account, but that its own weakness would there have revenged my former boldness, and betrayed it to perishing. But as he then, so this now, has had the marvelous felicity to light on the view, and fall under the compassion of a very gracious Princess. For so far has your Highness vouchsafed (having happened on the sight of this tractate) to express favor toward it, as not only to spend hours in it, and require a transcript of it, but further to recommend it by your gracious judgment to public view. In which particular I was not to advise with my own opinion, being to express my humblest acknowledgment to your Highness.
This only petition I shall accompany with it to your Highness's feet, that since it is a blossom which put forth so much too soon, it may therefore obtain the gracious influence of your Highness's favor, to protect it from that severity abroad which it otherwise justly fears.
God Almighty make your Highness as great a mirror of his continual mercies, as he has both of his graces and of learning.
Your Highness's most humble servant, Edward Reynolds.
