 digression, it must be a good frisky
one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse or his rider are to
be caught, but by rebound.
    The only difficulty, is raising powers suitable to the nature of the
service: FANCY is capricious - WIT must not be searched for - and PLEASANTRY
(good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be
laid at her feet.
    -- The best way for a man, is to say his prayers --
    Only if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects as well ghostly
as bodily - for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he had
said them than before - for other purposes, better.
    For my own part there is not a way either moral or mechanical under heaven
that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this case:
sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing the
point over and over again with her upon the extent of her own faculties --
    -- I never could make them an inch the wider --
    Then by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the
body, by temperance, soberness and chastity: These are good, quoth I, in
themselves - they are good, absolutely; - they are good, relatively; - they are
good for health-they are good for happiness in this world - they are good for
happiness in the next --
    In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there
they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as heaven made it: as for
the theological virtues of faith and hope, they give it courage; but then that
sniveling virtue of Meekness (as my father would always call it) takes it quite
away again, so you are exactly where you started.
    Now in all common and ordinary cases, there is nothing which I have found to
answer so well as this --
    -- Certainly, if there is any dependence upon Logic, and that I am not
blinded by self-love, there must be something of true genius about me, merely
upon this symptom of it, that I do not know what envy is: for never do I hit
upon any invention or device which tendeth to the furtherance of good writing,
but I instantly make it public; willing that all mankind should write as well as
myself.
    -- Which they certainly will, when they think as little.
 

                                  Chap. XIII.

Now in
