Text.BP190.E5v/Translation

B. G. Penotus Londrada at the Port of Saint Mary, Aquitaine, greetings.

These four particulars, dear reader, it has pleased me to reveal and share with you, which if at first glance do not correspond to your work and practice, remember to attribute it to your ignorance and error, for a slight mistake destroys the entire work, which comes from reading the books of philosophers and needs to be corrected. For the sayings of philosophers must be scrutinized, examined, and chewed over for a long time before you can extract their hidden meaning. Therefore, if you have been lazy in reading the books of philosophers, you will not be able to be prompt in preparing things. Hence, it was not permitted for me, by the authority of philosophical laws, to interpret everything openly, word for word. Something must be left for industrious minds to exercise themselves in by meditating and investigating. However, if you have not forgotten the debt of gratitude, all these things will be revealed to you and become known in my port of France, where many operations, hitherto known to few, will be faithfully depicted. Meanwhile, I am not the inventor of these particulars; some came to me as gifts, others through gold rewards and presents. But I generously offer these to you for free, for you to use rightly. Farewell.