“I am not at all ambitious that any one should love and esteem me more dead than living.  The humour of Tiberius is ridiculous, but yet common, who was more solicitous to extend his renown to posterity than to render himself acceptable to men of his own time.  If I were one of those to whom the world could owe commendation, I would give out of it one-half to have the other in hand; let their praises come quick and crowding about me, more thick than long, more full than durable; and let them cease, in God’s name, with my own knowledge of them, and when the sweet sound can no longer pierce my ears.  It were an idle humour to essay, now that I am about to forsake the commerce of men, to offer myself to them by a new recommendation.  I make no account of the goods I could not employ in the service of my life.  Such as I am, I will be elsewhere than in paper:  my art and industry have been ever directed to render myself good for something; my studies, to teach me to do, and not to write.  I have made it my whole business to frame my life:  this has been my trade and my work; I am less a writer of books than anything else.  I have coveted understanding for the service of my present and real conveniences, and not to lay up a stock for my posterity.  He who has anything of value in him, let him make it appear in his conduct, in his ordinary discourses, in his courtships, and his quarrels:  in play, in bed, at table, in the management of his affairs, in his economics.  Those whom I see make good books in ill breeches, should first have mended their breeches, if they would have been ruled by me.  Ask a Spartan whether he had rather be a good orator or a good soldier:  and if I was asked the same question, I would rather choose to be a good cook, had I not one already to serve me.  My God!  Madame, how should I hate such a recommendation of being a clever fellow at writing, and an ass and an inanity in everything else!  Yet I had rather be a fool both here and there than to have made so ill a choice wherein to employ my talent.  And I am so far from expecting to gain any new reputation by these follies, that I shall think I come off pretty well if I lose nothing by them of that little I had before.  For besides that this dead and mute painting will take from my natural being, it has no resemblance to my better condition, but is much lapsed from my former vigour and cheerfulness, growing faded and withered:  I am towards the bottom of the barrel, which begins to taste of the lees.

“As to the rest, Madame, I should not have dared to make so bold with the mysteries of physic, considering the esteem that you and so many others have of it, had I not had encouragement from their own authors.  I think there are of these among the old Latin writers but two, Pliny and Celsus if these ever fall into your hands, you will find that they speak much more rudely of their art than I do; I but pinch it, they cut its throat.  Pliny, amongst other things,