One or two things yet I was desirous to have amended if I could, concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must apologise, deprecari, and upon better advice give the friendly reader notice: it was not mine intent to prostitute my muse in English, or to divulge secreta Minervae, but to have exposed this more contract in Latin, if I could have got it printed. Any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary stationers in English; they print all
———cuduntque libellos
In quorum foliis vix simia nuda cacaret;
[135]Cum relego scripsisse pudet, quia plurima cerno
Me quoque quae fuerant judice digna lini.
When I peruse this tract which I have writ,
I am abash'd, and much I hold unfit.
I might indeed, (had I wisely done) observed that precept of the poet, ———nonumque prematur in annum, and have taken more care: or, as Alexander the physician would have done by lapis lazuli, fifty times washed before it be used, I should have revised, corrected and amended this tract; but I had not (as I said) that happy leisure, no amanuenses or assistants. Pancrates in [137]Lucian, wanting a servant as he went from Memphis to Coptus in Egypt, took a door bar, and after some superstitious words pronounced (Eucrates the relator was then present) made it stand up like a serving-man, fetch him water, turn the spit, serve in supper, and what work he would besides; and when he had done that service he desired, turned his man to a stick again. I have no such skill to make new men at my pleasure, or means to hire them; no whistle to call like the master of a ship, and bid them run, &c. I have no such authority, no such benefactors, as that noble [138]Ambrosius was to Origen, allowing him six or seven amanuenses to write out his dictates; I must for that cause do my business myself, and was therefore enforced, as a bear doth her whelps, to bring forth this confused lump; I had not time to lick it into form, as she doth her young ones, but even so to publish it, as it was first written quicquid in buccam venit, in an extemporean style, as [139]I do commonly all other exercises, effudi quicquid dictavit genius meus, out of a confused company of notes, and writ with as small deliberation as I do ordinarily speak, without all affectation of big words, fustian phrases, jingling terms, tropes, strong lines, that like [140]Acesta's arrows caught fire as they flew, strains of wit, brave heats, elegies, hyperbolical exornations, elegancies, &c., which many so much affect. I am [141]aquae potor, drink no wine at all, which so much improves our modern wits, a loose, plain, rude writer, ficum, voco ficum et ligonem ligonem and as free, as loose, idem calamo quod in mente, [142]I call a spade a spade, animis haec scribo, non auribus, I respect matter not words; remembering that of Cardan, verba propter res, non res propter verba: and seeking with Seneca, quid scribam, non quemadmodum, rather what than how to write: for as Philo thinks, [143]“He that is conversant about matter, neglects words, and those that excel in this art of speaking, have no profound learning,”
[144]Verba nitent phaleris, at nullus verba medullas
Intus habent———