The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not remedy,
and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected with
propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of
imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom.

The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect for
want of care, but because care will not always be successful, and
recollection or information come too late for use.

That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly
acknowledged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it was
unavoidable: I could not visit caverns to learn the miner's language,
nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor
visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the
names of wares, tools, and operations, of which no mention is found in
books; what favourable accident or easy inquiry brought within my reach,
has not been neglected; but it had been a hopeless labour to glean up
words, by courting living information, and contesting with the
sullenness of one, and the roughness of another.

To furnish the academicians _della Crusca_ with words of this kind, a
series of comedies called _la Fiera_, or the Fair, was professedly
written by Buonarotti; but I had no such assistant, and, therefore, was
content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not
luckily been so supplied.

Nor are all words, which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented
as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the
diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms