The anatomy of plants

MY LORD,

NE Reason why I Dedicate the following Discourses to Your Lordship, is, For that by Your great undeserved Respects, You have obliged me to do no less.

Another, my Lord, is, Because I could not but Publickly return Your Lordship Thanks, for minding the Royal Society of so good a Way, they are lately resolved upon, for the Management of a great part of their Business. Wherein, my Lord, I do more than presume, that I also speak the Sense of the whole Society; I think, not any one excepted.

I may with the same Confidence intimate, my Lord, how happy they account themselves, in having a Person so fit to preside their Affairs, as Your Lordship. The Largeness of your Knowledge, the Exactness of Your Judgment, the Evenness of Your Comport; being some of those necessary Qualifications, which His Majesty had in His Eye (as right well understanding what He did) when He fixed His Choice upon Your Lordship.

I know, my Lord, that there are some men, who have just so much Understanding, as only to teach them how to be Ambitious: The Flattering of whom, is somewhat like the Tickling of Children, till they fall a Dancing. But I also know, that Your Lordship unconcerneth Your self as much, in what I even now spake; as Cæsar did himself, when his Souldiers began to style him King. For as he said, Non Rex, sed Cæsar: So let Your Lordship be but once nam’d, and all that follows, is but a Tautology to what You are already known to be. Your being President of the Royal Society, Your being the First that was Chosen, and Chosen by so Knowing a Prince; becomes so real a Panegyrick to Your Lordship, as leaveth Verbal ones without any sound.

Whence, my Lord, I have a third Reason most naturally emergent, which is, That I dare to submit my self, as to what I have hereafter said, to Your Lordships Censure. You being so able and just an Arbiter betwixt the same and all those Persons therein concern’d; that You can neither be deceived, nor corrupted, to make a Judgment in any Point, to the Injury of either.

And truly, my Lord, were it only from a Principle of self-Interest, yet I could not desire it should be otherwise. For the World, if it lives, will certainly grow as much more knowing than it is; as it is now more, than it was heretofore. So that we have as little Reason to despise Antiquity; as we can have willingness, that we our selves should be despised by Posterity.

Yet some difference there is to be made; viz. betwixt those of all Ages, who have been modestly ignorant; and those who have thought, or pretended, that they were Omniscient. Or if knowing and acknowledging that they were Ignorant; have yet not been contented to be so; unless, with as good manners, as sense, they did conjure all Mankind not to offer at the knowing any more than themselves.

Upon the whole, my Lord, I desire not You should be a Patron, any further than You are a Judge. For if this small Essay hath deserved the least acceptance, I am sure, that in being one, You will be both.

I am,