and to look out each of the passages referred to. Again, if an author, in making an extract from some work of his own, gives a reference to it, the caviller will represent him as seeking to puff his own productions: if he omit to give the reference, the same caviller will charge him with seeking to pass off as new what had been published before. And again, a reader of this character, if he meet with a statement of something he was already convinced of, will deride it as a truism not worth mentioning; while anything that is new to him he will censure as an extravagant paradox. For 'you must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind."1 I chose, then, rather to incur the blame of the fault-if it be one-of encumbering the volume with two or three additional sheets, which, to some readers, may be superfluous, than to run the risk of misleading, or needlessly offending, many others, by omitting, and merely referring to, something essential to the argument, which they might not have seen, or might not distinctly remember. The passages thus selected are, of course, but a few out of many in which the subjects of these Essays have been treated of. I have inserted those that seemed most to the purpose, without expecting that all persons should agree in approving the selections made. But any one who thinks that some passages from other writers contain better illustrations than those here given, has only to edit the Essays himself with such extracts as he prefers. To the present edition some additions have been made; one of which a short Annotation' on Essay XLVI.-has been printed separate, for the use of purchasers of the former editions, and may be had of the Publishers. 1 Antony and Cleopatra, Act v. |