Complete.
AS we see some grounds that have long lain idle, and untilld, when grown rank and fertile by rest, to abound with, and spend their vertue in the product of innumerable sorts of weeds, and wild herbs, that are unprofitable, and of no wholesome use, and that to make them perform their true office we are to cultivate and prepare them for such seeds as are proper for our service. And as we see women that without the knowledge of men do sometimes of themselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that to cause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded with another kind of seed; even so it is with wits, which if not applyd to some certain study that may fix and restrain them, run into a thousand extravagancies, and are eternally roving here and there in the inextricable labyrinth of restless imagination.
Like as the quivering reflection | |
Of fountain waters, when the morning sun | |
Darts on the bason, or the moons pale beam | |
Gives light and colour to the captive stream, | |
Whips with fantastick motion round the place, | |
And walls and roof strikes with its trembling rays. | |
Æn., l. 8. |
Like sick mens dreams, that from a troubled brain | |
Phantasms create, ridiculous and vain. | |
Hor. Arts Poet. |
He that lives every where does no where live. |
When I lately retird my self to my own house, with a resolution, as much as possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I fancyd I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure to entertain and divert itself, which I also now hopd it might the better be entrusted to do, as being by time and observation become more settled and mature; but I find,
Even in the most retird estate | |
Leisure it self does various thoughts create. | |
Lucan., l. 4. |
that, quite contrary, it is like a horse that has broke from his rider, who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman would put him to, and creates me so many chimæras and fantastick monsters one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make them ashamd of themselves.