But my commentators will never be able to ascertain anything more of the chronology of this Koran, than the dates of its conception, and of its birth-day, the interval between them having been more than twenty years.
INTERCHAPTER X.
MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT. ELUCIDATIONS FROM HENRY MORE AND DR. WATTS. AN INCIDENTAL OPINION UPON HORACE WALPOLE. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT “FLOWETH AT ITS OWN SWEET WILL.” PICTURES AND BOOKS. A SAYING OF MR PITT'S CONCERNING WILBERFORCE. THE AUTHOR EXPLAINS IN WHAT SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH A LONG BOW.
Vorrei, disse il Signor Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco piu minutamente di questo, che non fate; che in vero vi tenete molto al generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito.
IL CORTEGIANO.
Henry More, in the Preface General to the collection of his philosophical writings, says to the reader, “if thy curiosity be forward to enquire what I have done in these new editions of my books, I am ready to inform thee that I have taken the same liberty in this Intellectual Garden of my own planting, that men usually take in their natural ones; which is, to set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where and what they please. And therefore if I have rased out some things, (which yet are but very few) and transposed others, and interserted others, I hope I shall seem injurious to no man in ordering and cultivating this Philosophical Plantation of mine according to mine own humour and liking.”
Except as to the rasing out, what our great Platonist has thus said for himself, may here be said for me. “Many things,” as the happy old lutanist, Thomas Mace, says, “are good, yea, very good; but yet upon after-consideration we have met with the comparative, which is better; yea, and after that, with the superlative, (best of all), by adding to, or altering a little, the same good things.”