For I was educated as a scholar in the most flourishing college in Europe, “a most distinguished college,” and can almost boast with Paolo Giovio: “In that brilliant home of the Vatican, renowned throughout the world, I learned much that was useful over thirty-seven years.” I have remained a scholar for thirty years, with access to libraries as good as any he enjoyed. I would therefore be unwilling either to live as a drone, an unproductive or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write anything that might dishonour so royal and generous a foundation.

I have accomplished something, though I am a theologian by profession. Yet, “carried away by the whirlwind of my mind,” as that writer said, my roaming intelligence and inconstant, unsettled mind made me eager—unable even to acquire a superficial skill in any subject—to gain a smattering of them all: to be “somebody in everything, nobody in any one thing.” Plato commends this, and Lipsius, following him, endorses and recommends it as a principle to impress upon every inquiring mind: not to be a slave to one branch of learning, or devote oneself entirely to one subject, as most people do, but to range widely, “a youth of a hundred talents,” to have an oar in everyone's boat, to taste every dish and sip from every cup. This, Montaigne says, was admirably done by Aristotle and by his own learned countryman, Adrien Turnèbe.

I have always had this wandering inclination, though without the same success. Like a spaniel ranging about, barking at every bird it sees and abandoning its proper game, I have pursued everything except what I should. I may justly and truthfully complain, “Whoever is everywhere is nowhere,” and say, as Gesner modestly did, that I have read many books to little purpose. Lacking a good method, I have rummaged confusedly through various authors in our libraries, gaining little for want of skill, order, memory, and judgment.

I have travelled only through maps and charts, where my unconfined thoughts have wandered freely, for I have always taken particular delight in the study of cosmography. Saturn ruled my birth chart and was culminating, and so forth; Mars was the chief indicator of my character, in exact conjunction with my ascendant. Both were favourably placed in their houses, and so forth.

I am not poor, I am not rich: “I have nothing; I lack nothing.” I have little, but want for nothing; all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. I have never obtained greater advancement, and so owe no debt for it. Thanks to my noble and generous patrons, I have enough to live on—“praise be to God”—although I remain a member of the college, like Democritus in his garden, leading a monastic life, “a theatre to myself,” secluded from the world's turmoil and troubles.

“And as though stationed on a watchtower,” as he said, somewhere high above you all, like “the Stoic sage, seeing every age, past and present, as if in a single glance,” I hear and see what happens in the wider world: how others run, ride, struggle, and wear themselves out at court and in the country. Far from their wrangling lawsuits, “I am accustomed to laugh to myself at the vanity of the court and the ambition of the forum.” I laugh at it all. I alone am free from fears that my lawsuit will fail, my ships sink, my crops and cattle come to harm, or my trade decline. I have neither wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for.

I am merely a spectator of other people's fortunes and adventures, watching them play their parts, which seem to unfold before me in all their variety upon a public stage. I hear fresh news every day: the usual reports of war, plagues, fires, floods, thefts, murders, massacres, phenomena in the sky, comets, spectres, marvels, and apparitions; of towns captured and cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, and elsewhere; daily musters of troops and preparations, and the other events these stormy times supply; battles fought, so many men killed, single combats, shipwrecks, piracy and sea battles, peace, alliances, stratagems, and fresh alarms.

A vast confusion of vows, wishes, deeds, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, and grievances reaches our ears each day. New books every day: pamphlets, news-sheets, histories, whole catalogues of volumes of every kind; new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, and more.

Now comes news of weddings, masques, mummers' performances, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, jousts and tournaments, trophies, triumphal celebrations, revels, sports, and plays. Then, as the scene changes, treasons, swindles, robberies, monstrous villainies of every kind, funerals, burials, the deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions: now comic events, then tragic ones. Today we hear of new lords and officers appointed, tomorrow of great men deposed, then of fresh honours bestowed. One is released, another imprisoned; one buys property, another goes broke; one prospers, his neighbour becomes bankrupt; now abundance, then scarcity and famine. One runs, another rides, quarrels, laughs, weeps, and so on.

Such things I hear each day, private and public news alike, amid the world's splendour and misery: merriment, pride, perplexities and cares, innocence and villainy, subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, all mingling and presenting themselves. I jog along, “a private man apart,” continuing as I have always lived, “in the same condition as before,” left to a solitary life and my own troubles at home.

Except that sometimes, “to tell the whole truth,” just as Diogenes went into the city and Democritus down to the harbour to observe people's ways, I would take a walk for recreation, look at the world, and inevitably make a few observations: “less a shrewd observer than a plain reporter.” I did not, as they did, scoff or laugh at everything, but felt a mixture of emotions. Your commotions have often stirred my anger and my laughter.