Personally I'm intruiged by the fact that Thomas Stephens was the first to recognize the relation between Indian and European languages, and thus a founder of comparative historical linguistics as a science.
My transcription from the pertinent sentences on the last page:
Linguae harum regionum sunt et multae. Pronunciationem habent non invenustam, et compositionem latinae graecaeque similem: phrases et constructiones plane mirabiles. Literae syllabarum vim habent, quae toties variatur quoties consonantis cum vocalibus, vel mutae cum liquidis combinari possunt. (T. Stephens, letter to his brother, 1583)
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