end is ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with reverence be
it spoken, I only live for myself; there all my designs terminate. I
studied, when young, for ostentation; since, to make myself a little
wiser; and now for my diversion, but never for any profit. A vain and
prodigal humor I had after this sort of furniture, not only for the
supplying my own need, but, moreover, for ornament and outward show, I
have since quite cured myself of.

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them;
but every good has its ill; 'tis a pleasure that is not pure and
clean, no more than others: it has its inconveniences, and great ones
too. The soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of
which I must withal never neglect, remains in the mean time without
action, and grows heavy and somber. I know no excess more prejudicial
to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.

IV

THAT THE SOUL DISCHARGES HER PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS WHERE TRUE
ONES ARE WANTING[22]

A gentleman of my country, who was very often tormented with the gout,
being importun'd by his physicians totally to reclaim his appetite
from all manner of salt meats, was wont presently to reply that he
must needs have something to quarrel with in the extremity of his
fits, and that he fancy'd that railing at and cursing one while the
Bologna sausages, and another the dry'd tongues and the hams, was some
mitigation to his pain. And in good earnest, as the arm when it is
advanced to strike, if it fail of meeting with that upon which it was
design'd to discharge the blow, and spends itself in vain, does offend
the striker himself; and as also, that to make a pleasant prospect the
sight should not be lost and dilated in a vast extent of empty air,
but have some bounds to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable
distance:

"As winds do lose their strength, unless withstood
By some dark grove of strong opposing wood."

[Footnote 22: The translation of Cotton before it was revised by
Hazlitt.]

So it appears that the soul, being transported and discompos'd, turns
its violence upon itself, if not supply'd with something to oppose it,
and therefore always requires an enemy as an object on which to
discharge its fury and resentment. Plutarch says very well of those
who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part
which is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle,
d