“I say some such occasion may sometimes give you an opportunity of coming handsomely to your new intended key: but if none of these shall happen, then you ought, in a judicious and masterly way, to work from your last key which you played upon, in some voluntary way till you have brought your matter so to pass that your auditors may be captivated with a new attention; yet so insinuatingly, that they may have lost the remembrance of the foregoing key they know not how; nor are they at all concerned for the loss of it, but rather taken with a new content and delight at your so cunning and complete artifice.”
With strict propriety then may it be said of these my chapters as Wordsworth has said of certain sonnets during his tour in Scotland and on the English border, that they
Have moved in order, to each other bound
By a continuous and acknowledged tie
Tho' unapparent, like those shapes distinct
That yet survive ensculptured on the walls
Of Palace, or of Temple, 'mid the wreck
Of famed Persepolis; each following each,
As might beseem a stately embassy
In set array; these bearing in their hands
Ensign of civil power, weapon of war,
Or gift to be presented at the Throne
Of the Great King; and others as they go
In priestly vest, with holy offerings charged,
Or leading victims dressed for sacrifice.
For an ordinary book then the ordinary division into chapters might very well have sufficed. But this is an extraordinary book. Hath not the Quarterly Review—that Review which among all Reviews is properly accounted facile Princeps,—hath not that great critical authority referred to it κατ᾽ εξοχην as “the extraordinary book called the Doctor?” Yes reader;
All things within it
Are so digested, fitted and composed
As it shows Wit had married Order.2
And as the exceptions in grammar prove the rule, so the occasional interruptions of order here are proofs of that order, and in reality belong to it.
2 B. JONSON.
Lord Bacon (then Sir Francis) said in a letter to the Bishop of Ely upon sending him his writing intitled Cogitata et Visa, “I am forced to respect as well my times, as the matter. For with me it is thus, and I think with all men in my case; if I bind myself to an argument it loadeth my mind; but if I rid my mind of the present cogitation it is rather a recreation. This hath put me into these miscellanies, which I purpose to suppress if God give me leave to write a just and perfect volume of philosophy.”
That I am full of cogitations like Lord Bacon the judicious reader must ere this time have perceived; though he may perhaps think me not more worthy on that score to be associated with Bacon, than beans or cabbage or eggs at best. Like him however in this respect I am, however unlike in others; and it is for the reader's recreation as well as mine, and for our mutual benefit, that my mind should be delivered of some of its cogitations as soon as they are ripe for birth.
I know not whence thought comes; who indeed can tell? But this we know, that like the wind it cometh as it listeth. Happily there is no cause for me to say with Sir Philip Sydney,