I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by an honest diversion; or, if I study, ’tis for no other science than what treats of the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and how to live well.

“Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.”

               ["My horse must work according to my step.” 
               —­Propertius, iv.]

I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading; after a charge or two, I give them over.  Should I insist upon them, I should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding, that must be satisfied at first:  what I do not discern at once is by persistence rendered more obscure.  I do nothing without gaiety; continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires my judgment.  My sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I must withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts; just as, to judge rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightly over it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiterated glances.  If one book do not please me, I take another; and I never meddle with any, but at such times as I am weary of doing nothing.  I care not much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger; neither do I converse much with Greek authors, because my judgment cannot do its work with imperfect intelligence of the material.

Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be ranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement.  As to the Amadis, and such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting even my childhood.  And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or rashly, that this old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer tickled with Ariosto, no, nor with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I was formerly so ravished, are now of no more relish, and I can hardly have the patience to read them.  I speak my opinion freely of all things, even of those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive to be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction.  And, accordingly, the judgment I deliver, is to show the measure of my own sight, and not of the things I make so bold to criticise.  When I find myself disgusted with Plato’s ‘Axiochus’, as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself:  it is not so arrogant as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments of antiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom it is rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either to stop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate to the heart, or to consider it by sortie false light.  It is content with only securing itself from trouble and disorder; as to its own weakness, it frankly acknowledges and confesses it.  It thinks it gives a just interpretation