and restrain it, runs into a thousand Extravagancies, and is
eternally roving here and there in the inextricable labyrinth of
restless Imagination.

If every one who hears or reads a good Sentence or maxim, would
immediately consider how it does any way touch his own private concern,
he would soon find, that it was not so much a good saying, as a severe
lash to the ordinary Bestiality of his judgment: but Men receive the
Precepts and admonitions of Truth as generally directed to the common
sort and never particularly to themselves, and instead of applying them
to their own manners, do only very ignorantly and unprofitably commit
them to Memory, without suffering themselves to be at all instructed, or
converted by them.

We say of some compositions that they stink of Oil and smell of the
Lamp, by reason of a certain rough harshness that the laborious handling
imprints upon those, where great force has been employed: but besides
this, the solicitude of doing well, and a certain striving and
contending of a mind too far strain'd, and over-bent upon its
undertaking, breaks and hinders it self, like Water that by force of its
own pressing Violence and Abundance cannot find a ready issue through
the neck of a Bottle, or a narrow sluice.

Humour, Temper, Education and a thousand other Circumstances create so
great a difference betwixt the several Palates of Men, and their
Judgments upon ingenious Composures, that nothing can be more chimerical
and foolish in an Author than the Ambition of a general Reputation.

As Plants are suffocated and drown'd with too much nourishment, and
Lamps with too much Oyl, so is the active part of the understanding with
too much study and matter, which being embarass'd and confounded with
the Diversity of things is deprived of the force and power to disingage
it self; and by the Pressure of this weight, it is bow'd, subjected and
rendred of no use.

* Studious and inquisitive Men commonly at forty or fifty at the most,
have fixed and settled their judgments in most Points, and as it were
made their last understanding, supposing they have thought, or read, or
heard what can be said on all sides of things, and after that they grow
positive and impatient of Contradiction, thinking it a disparagement to
them to alter their Judgment.

All Skillful Masters ought to have a care not to let their Works be seen
in _Embryo_, for all beginnings are defective, and the imagination is
always prejudiced.