having ever hated these promises and prescriptions, not only out of
distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of
the artist:

"Simpliciora militares decent."

["Simplicity becomes warriors."--Quintilian, Instit. Orat., xi. I.]

'Tis enough that I have promised to myself never again to take upon me
to speak in a place of respect, for as to speaking, when a man reads his
speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to
those who naturally could give it a grace by action; and to rely upon the
mercy of my present invention, I would much less do it; 'tis heavy and
perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important
necessities.

Permit, reader, this essay its course also, and this third sitting to
finish the rest of my picture: I add, but I correct not. First, because
I conceive that a man having once parted with his labours to the world,
he has no further right to them; let him do better if he can, in some new
undertaking, but not adulterate what he has already sold. Of such
dealers nothing should be bought till after they are dead. Let them well
consider what they do before they, produce it to the light who hastens
them? My book is always the same, saving that upon every new edition
(that the buyer may not go away quite empty) I take the liberty to add
(as 'tis but an ill jointed marqueterie) some supernumerary emblem; it is
but overweight, that does not disfigure the primitive form of the essays,
but, by a little artful subtlety, gives a kind of particular value to
every one of those that follow. Thence, however, will easily happen some
transposition of chronology, my stories taking place according to their
opportuneness, not always according to their age.

Secondly, because as to what concerns myself, I fear to lose by change:
my understanding does not always go forward, it goes backward too. I do
not much less suspect my fancies for being the second or the third, than
for being the first, or present, or past; we often correct ourselves as
foolishly as we do others. I am grown older by a great many years since
my first publications, which were in the year 1580; but I very much doubt
whether I am grown an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are two several
persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to
be old, if we only travelled towards improvement; but 'tis a drunken,
stumbling, reeling, in