rendered them necessary, or convenient, are known. And what has been done with these parts, might have been done with the whole, if due pains had been taken, at a time when persons were still living who knew when, and why, every separate portion had been, as they believed,―revealed. This would have required more diligence than the first Caliph had either leisure or inclination to bestow, and perhaps more sagacity than he possessed: the task would have been difficult, but it was possible.

But my commentators will never be able to ascertain anything more of the chronology of this Koran, than the dates of its conception, and of its birth-day, the interval between them having been more than twenty years.

INTERCHAPTER X.

MORE ON THE FOREGOING SUBJECT.

ELUCIDATION

FROM HENRY MORE AND DR. WATTS. AN INCIDENTAL

OPINION UPON HORACE WALPOLE. THE STREAM OF

66

THOUGHT FLOWETH AT ITS OWN Sweet will.”

PICTURES AND BOOKS. A SAYING OF MR. PITT'S

CONCERNING

WILBERFORCE.

THE AUTHOR EX

PLAINS IN WHAT SENSE IT MIGHT BE SAID THAT HE

SOMETIMES SHOOTS WITH A LONG BOW.

Vorrei, disse il Signor Gasparo Pallavicino, che voi ragionassi un poco piu minutamente di questo, che non fate; che en vero vi tenete molto al generale, et quasi ci mostrate le cose per transito. IL CORTEGIANO.

66

HENRY MORE, in the Preface General to the collection of his philosophical writings, says to the reader, “ if thy curiosity be forward to enquire what I have done in these new editions of my books, I am ready to inform thee that I have

taken the same liberty in this Intellectual Garden of my own planting, that men usually take in their natural ones; which is, to set or pluck up, to transplant and inoculate, where and what they please. And therefore if I have rased out some things, (which yet are but very few) and transposed others, and interserted others, I hope I shall seem injurious to no man in ordering and cultivating this Philosophical Plantation of mine according to mine own humour and liking."

Except as to the rasing out, what our great Platonist has thus said for himself, may here be said for me. 66 Many things," as the happy old lutanist, Thomas Mace, says, " are good, yea, very good; but yet upon after-consideration we have met with the comparative, which is better; yea, and after that, with the superlative, (best of all), by adding to, or altering a little, the same good things."

During the years that this Opus has been in hand, (and in head and heart also) nothing was expunged as if it had become obsolete because the persons therein alluded to had

departed like shadows, or the subjects there touched on had grown out of date; but much was introduced from time to time where it fitted best. Allusions occur in relation to facts which are many years younger than the body of the chapter in which they have been grafted, thus rendering it impossible for any critic, however acute, to determine the date of any one chapter by its contents.

What Watts has said of his own Treatise upon the Improvement of the Mind may therefore with strict fidelity be applied to this book, which I trust, O gentle Reader, thou wilt regard as specially conducive to the improvement of thine. "The work was composed at different times, and by slow degrees. Now and then indeed it spread itself into branches and leaves, like a plant in April, and advanced seven or eight pages in a week; and sometimes it lay by without growth, like a vegetable in the winter, and did not increase half so much in the revolution of a year. As thoughts occurred to me in reading or meditation, or in my notices of the various appearances of things

among mankind, they were thrown under appropriate heads, and were, by degrees, reduced to such a method as the subject would admit. The language and dress of these sentiments is such as the present temper of mind dictated, whether it were grave or pleasant, severe or smiling. And a book which has been twenty years in writing may be indulged in some variety of style and manner, though I hope there will not be found any great difference of sentiment." With little transposition Watts' words have been made to suit my purpose; and when he afterwards speaks of "so many lines altered, so many things interlined, and so many paragraphs and pages here and there inserted," the circumstances which he mentions as having deceived him in computing the extent of his work, set forth the embarrassment which the commentators will find in settling the chronology of mine.

The difficulty would not be obviated were I, like Horace Walpole, (though Heaven knows for no such motives as influenced that posthumous libeller,-) to leave a box containing the