firm motion: like that of reeds, which the air
casually waves to and fro at pleasure. Antiochus had in his youth
strongly written in favour of the Academy; in his old age he wrote as
much against it; would not, which of these two soever I should follow, be
still Antiochus? After having established the uncertainty, to go about
to establish the certainty of human opinions, was it not to establish
doubt, and not certainty, and to promise, that had he had yet another age
to live, he would be always upon terms of altering his judgment, not so
much for the better, as for something else?

The public favour has given me a little more confidence than I expected;
but what I 'most fear is, lest I should glut the world with my writings;
I had rather, of the two, pique my reader than tire him, as a learned man
of my time has done. Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom,
or upon what account it will; yet ought a man to understand why he is
commended, that he may know how to keep up the same reputation still:
imperfections themselves may get commendation. The vulgar and common
estimation is seldom happy in hitting; and I am much mistaken if, amongst
the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained
the popular applause. For my part, I return my thanks to those
good-natured men who are pleased to take my weak endeavours in good part;
the faults of the workmanship are nowhere so apparent as in a matter
which of itself has no recommendation. Blame not me, reader, for those
that slip in here by the fancy or inadvertency of others; every hand,
every artisan, contribute their own materials; I neither concern myself
with orthography (and only care to have it after the old way) nor
pointing, being very inexpert both in the one and the other. Where they
wholly break the sense, I am very little concerned, for they at least
discharge me; but where they substitute a false one, as they so often do,
and wrest me to their conception, they ruin me. When the sentence,
nevertheless, is not strong enough for my proportion, a civil person
ought to reject it as spurious, and none of mine. Whoever shall know how
lazy I am, and how indulgent to my own humour, will easily believe that I
had rather write as many more essays, than be tied to revise these over
again for so childish a correction.

I said elsewhere, that being planted in the very centre of this new
religion, I am not only deprived of any great familiarity