from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the
texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and
the three following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted
to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a
book would not hold together a single year: nor is it a poor creeping
digression (which but for the name of, a man might continue as well
going on in the king's highway) which will do the business--no; if it
is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky
subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to be caught, but
by rebound.

The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of
the service: Fancy is capricious--Wit must not be searched for--and
Pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was
an empire to be laid at her feet.

--The best way for a man, is to say his prayers--

Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well
ghostly as bodily--for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse
after he has said them than before--for other purposes, better.

For my own part, there is not a way either moral or mechanical under
heaven that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this
case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and
arguing the point over and over again with her upon the extent of her
own faculties--

--I never could make them an inch the wider--

Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the
body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity: These are good, quoth
I, in themselves--they are good, absolutely;--they are good,
relatively;--they are good for health--they are good for happiness in
this world--they are good for happiness in the next--

In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there
they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made
it: as for the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it
courage; but then that snivelling virtue of Meekness (as my father would
always call it) takes it quite away again, so you are exactly where you
started.

Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have
found to answer so well as this--

--Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not
blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me,
merely upon this symptom of it, that I d