His happy mind, like the not less happy, and not more active intellect of Humboldt King of Travellers, was excursive in its habits. To such discursive—or excursiveness I also was prone, and he who observed in me this propensity encouraged it, tempering however that encouragement with his wonted discretion. Let your imagination, he said, fly like the lady bird
north, south and east and west,
but take care that it always comes home to rest.
Perhaps it may be said therefore of his unknown friend and biographer as Passovier said of Michel de Montaigne, il estoit personnage hardy, qui se croyoit, et comme tel se laissoit aisement emporter a la beauté de son esprit; tellement que par ses ecrits il prenoit plaisir de desplaire plaisamment.
Perhaps also some one who for his own happiness is conversant with the literature of that affluent age, may apply to the said unknown what Balzac said of the same great Michael, Michael the second, (Michael Angelo was Michael the first,) Montaigne sçait bien ce qui il dit; mais, sans violer le respect qui luy est deu, je pense aussi, qu'il ne sçait pas toujours ce qu'il va dire.
Dear Reader you may not only say this of the unknown sans violer le respect qui luy est deu, but you will pay him what he will consider both a great and a just compliment, in saying so.
For I have truly endeavoured to observe the precepts of my revered Mentor, and to follow his example, which I venture to hope, the judicious reader will think I have done with some success. He may have likened me for the manner in which I have conducted this great argument, to a gentle falcon, which however high it may soar to command a wider region with its glance, and however far it may fly in pursuit of its quarry, returns always to the falconer's hand.
Learned and discreet reader, if you should not always discern the track of associations over which I have passed as fleetly as Camilla over the standing corn;—if the story which I am relating to thee should seem in its course sometimes to double like a hare in her flight, or in her sport,—sometimes to bound forward like a jerboa, or kangaroo, and with such a bound that like Milton's Satan it overleaps all bounds; or even to skip like a flea, so as to be here, there and every where, taking any direction rather than that which will bring it within your catch;—learned and discreet reader if any of these similitudes should have occurred to you, think of Pindar, read Landor's Gebir, and remember what Mr. Coleridge has said for himself formerly, and prophetically for me, intelligenda non intellectum adfero. Would you have me plod forward like a tortoise in my narration, foot after foot in minute steps, dragging his slow tail along? Or with such deliberate preparation for progressive motion that like a snail the slime of my way should be discernible?
A bye-stander at chess who is ignorant of the game, presently understands the straight and lateral movement of the rooks, the diagonal one of the bishops, and the power which the Queen possesses of using both. But the knight perplexes him, till he discovers that the knight's leap, eccentric as at first it seems, is nevertheless strictly regulated.
We speak of erratic motions among the heavenly bodies; but it is because the course they hold is far beyond our finite comprehension.