his favor. "Therefore, I, desiring to offer myself to your magnificence with some testimony of my services to it, have not found among the goods of my house anything I hold dearer or that I esteem as much as the understanding of the actions of great men, learned by long experience with modern things and continuous reading of ancient ones which I, having thought out at length and examined with great diligence and now reduced to a small volume, send to your magnificence." He wrote this as the introduction to the book, explaining why he had used it as a gift.
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