re.
I turn over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longer
recognise as another's; 'tis only what my judgment has made its advantage
of, the discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed: the
author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and
I am so excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writings
and compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and am
not aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and
examples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him,
and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not
contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from
rich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with
reason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that other
books do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have
read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.

Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very much contribute to
my ignorance; I have a slow and heavy wit, the least cloud stops its
progress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy a
riddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that
will not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess, draughts,
and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have a
slow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it
apprehends well, for the time it retains it. My sight is perfect,
entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and
heavy at work, which occasions that I cannot read long, but am forced to
have one to read to me. The younger Pliny can inform such as have not
experimented it themselves, how important an impediment this is to those
who devote themselves to this employment.

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particular
faculty is not seen to shine; no soul so buried in sloth and ignorance,
but it will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that a
man blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear,
and excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of our
masters: but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and
ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so;
which I say to accuse my own; for whether it be through infirmity o