lmost
this whole composition? I go here and there, culling out of several
books the sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have no
memory to retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where, to
say the truth, they are no more mine than in their first places. We are,
I conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not at all in what is
past, or more than is that which is to come. But the worst on't is,
their scholars and pupils are no better nourished by this kind of
inspiration; and it makes no deeper impression upon them, but passes from
hand to hand, only to make a show to be tolerable company, and to tell
pretty stories, like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use or
value, but to reckon with, or to set up at cards:

"Apud alios loqui didicerunt non ipsi secum."

["They have learned to speak from others, not from themselves."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, v. 36.]

"Non est loquendum, sed gubernandum."

["Speaking is not so necessary as governing."--Seneca, Ep., 108.]

Nature, to shew that there is nothing barbarous where she has the sole
conduct, oftentimes, in nations where art has the least to do, causes
productions of wit, such as may rival the greatest effect of art
whatever. In relation to what I am now speaking of, the Gascon proverb,
derived from a cornpipe, is very quaint and subtle:

"Bouha prou bouha, mas a remuda lous dits quem."

["You may blow till your eyes start out; but if once you offer to
stir your fingers, it is all over."]

We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these are
the very words of Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? What do we
judge? A parrot would say as much as that.

And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome,--[Calvisius
Sabinus. Seneca, Ep., 27.]--who had been solicitous, with very great
expense, to procure men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whom
he had always attending his person, to the end, that when amongst his
friends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject whatsoever, they
might supply his place, and be ready to prompt him, one with a sentence
of Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and so forth, every one
according to his talent; and he fancied this knowledge to be his own,
because it was in the heads of those who lived upon his bounty; as they
also do, whose learning consists in having noble libraries. I k