The world’s most beautiful book is also its most mysterious. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published anonymously in 1499, recounts the “struggle for love in a dream” of Poliphilo, who pursues his beloved Polia through 370 pages of gorgeous woodcuts and epoch-making typography. Their story is told in a cryptic polyglot text of Tuscan, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, replete with arcane references and hidden meanings.

“The Hypnerotomachia is a catalogue of every possible and imaginable foil to understanding,” writes Liane LeFavre in her 2005 exploration of the text. “On every page one is confronted by words whose meaning must be deciphered, inscriptions that have to be interpreted, episodes whose conclusion is ambiguous, a hero and a heroine who embody ideas that have to be divined. Texts and images in code, symbolic images and their interpretation, are recurrent patterns in these cryptic tactics.”

The author’s enormous erudition continually interrupts his story: He fills 200 pages with architectural descriptions and another 60 with botanical lore. The book’s patron, Leonardo Crasso, wrote that it contains “so much science that one would search in vain through all the ancient books [for its meaning], as is the case for many occult things of nature.” The author, he wrote, “devised his work so that only the wise may penetrate the sanctuary.”

Why would anyone produce such a prodigious work of art and learning and then conceal his identity? No one knows for certain. A century and a half after its publication, a French reader discovered an acrostic concealed in the first letters of the book’s 39 chapters. These spell out “Poliam Frater Francescus Columnia Peramavit,” or “Brother Francesco Colonna loved Polonna immensely.” Who was Francesco Colonna? There are two candidates by that name, a Venetian friar and a Roman aristocrat. But both lived on for decades after 1499 and neither claimed to be author of this remarkable book. His identity, and that of the illustrator, remain uncertain.

More wisdom from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

• Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One.
• The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
• The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
• Prosperity discovers Vice, Adversity, Virtue.
• God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.
• The same man cannot be both Friend and Flatterer.
• Beauty and folly are old companions.
• Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.
• Hear Reason, or she’ll make you feel her.
• What’s given shines, what’s receiv’d is rusty.
• Sally laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.
• Words may shew a man’s Wit, but Actions his Meaning.
• It’s common for men to give pretended reasons instead of one real one.
• Fear to do ill, and you need fear nought else.
• Success has ruin’d many a Man.

Altho’ thy teacher act not as he preaches,
Yet ne’ertheless, if good, do what he teaches;
Good counsel, failing men may give, for why,
He that’s aground knows where the shoal doth lie.

More proverbs from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

• Those who have nothing to trouble them, will be troubled at nothing.
• Great modesty often hides great merit.
• The Muses love the Morning.
• Do me the favour to deny me at once.
• There’s none deceived but he that trusts.
• If evils come not, then our fears are vain; and if they do, fear but augments the pain.
• Full of courtesie, full of craft.
• The tongue is ever turning the aching tooth.
• Nothing dries sooner than a Tear.
• In the Affairs of this World Men are saved, not by Faith, but by the Want of it.
• An old young man will be a young old man.
• The prodigal generally does more injustice than the covetous.
• Singularity in the right, hath ruined many: happy those who are convinced of the general Opinion.
• Why does the blind man’s wife paint herself?

“The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others, than shewing a great deal yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with his own facetiousness and ingenuity, will the sooner come into it again. Most men had rather please than admire you and seek less to be instructed and diverted, than approved and applauded; and it is certainly the most delicate sort of pleasure, to please another. But that sort of wit, which employs itself insolently in criticizing and censuring the words and sentiments of others in conversation, is absolute folly; for it answers none of the needs of conversation. He who uses it neither improves others, is improved himself, or pleases any one.”