progeny; how scraps of paper
come to be covered with the cabala of half-written thoughts,
thenceforward doomed to suffer the dispersion-fate of Sibylline leaves;
how stores of mingled information gravitate into something of order,
each seed herding with its fellows; and how every atom of mixed metal,
educationally held in solution by the mind, is sought out by a keen
precipitating test, gregariously building up in time its own true
crystal.

Hereabouts, therefore, and hereafter, in as frank a fashion as
heretofore, artlessly, too, and, but for crowding fancies, briefly shall
follow a full and free confession of the embryo circulating library now
in the book-case of my brain; only premising, for the last of all last
times, that while I know it to be morally impossible that all should be
pleased herewith, I feel it to be intellectually improbable that any one
mind should equally be satisfied with each of the many parts of a
performance so various, inconsistent, and unusual; premising, also, that
wherein I may have stumbled upon other people's titles, it is
unwittingly and unwillingly; for the age breeds books so quickly, that a
man must read harder than I do to peruse their very names; and premising
this much farther, that I profess to be a sort of dog in the manger,
neither using up my materials myself, nor letting any one else do so;
and that, whether I shall happen or not, at any time future to amplify
and perfect any of these matters, I still proclaim to all bookmakers and
booksellers, STEAL NOT; for so surely as I catch any one thus
behaving--and truly, my masters, the temptation is but small--I will
stick a "_Sic vos, non vobis,_" on his brazen forehead.

Wait! there remaineth yet a moment in which to say out the remnant of my
mind, "an author's mind," its last parting speech, its dying utterances
before extreme unction. I owe all the world apologies; I would pray a
catholic forgiveness. Authors and reviewers, critics, and the
undiscriminating many, fair women, honest men, I cry your pardons
universally! I do confess the learning of my mind to lie, strangely and
Pisa-like, inveterately as at Welsh Caerphilli, out of the perpendicular
of truth; it is my disposition to make the most of all things, for good
or for evil; I write, speak, and think, as if I were but an unhallowed
special pleader; I colour highly, and my outlines are too strong; I am
guilty on all sides of unintentional misstatements, consequent on the