SOURCE: “To the ingenious and learned Gentleman, the worshipful John Evelyn Esquire,” in The Mirrour of True Nobility & Gentility: Being the Life of the Renowned Nicolaus Claudius Fabricius Lord of Peiresk, Senator of the Parliament at Aix, by Pierre Gassendi, translated by William Rand, J. Streater, 1657, n.p.

Dr. William Rand translated Gassendi's early Life of Peiresc into English as The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility. In this excerpt from the work's dedicatory epistle addressed to the diarist John Evelyn, Rand reveals his admiration for Gassendi's original text and for Gassendi himself.

To the ingenious and learned Gentleman, the worshipful John Evelyn Esquire.

Worthy Sir,

Much about ten years are fled, since my learned friend Dr. Benjamin Worsley brought me first acquainted with the name and fame of Peireskius, and knowing that I delighted to busie my self in that kind, wished that I would render his...