As Periander, being
consulted with how to preserve a tyranny newly usurped, bid the
messenger attend and report what he saw him do; and went into his
garden and topped all the highest flowers, signifying that it
consisted in the cutting off and keeping low of the nobility and
grandees. Ad placitum, are the characters real before mentioned,
and words: although some have been willing by curious inquiry, or
rather by apt feigning, to have derived imposition of names from
reason and intendment; a speculation elegant, and, by reason it
searcheth into antiquity, reverent, but sparingly mixed with truth,
and of small fruit. This portion of knowledge touching the notes of
things and cogitations in general, I find not inquired, but
deficient. And although it may seem of no great use, considering
that words and writings by letters do far excel all the other ways;
yet because this part concerneth, as it were, the mint of knowledge
(for words are the tokens current and accepted for conceits, as
moneys are for values, and that it is fit men be not ignorant that
moneys may be of another kind than gold and silver), I thought good
to propound it to better inquiry.
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