so much credit and authority, crude and simple effects of nature, and of a weak nature to boot?  Is it not to build a wall without stone or brick, or some such thing, to write books without learning and without art?  The fancies of music are carried on by art; mine by chance.  I have this, at least, according to discipline, that never any man treated of a subject he better understood and knew than I what I have undertaken, and that in this I am the most understanding man alive:  secondly, that never any man penetrated farther into his matter, nor better and more distinctly sifted the parts and sequences of it, nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he proposed to himself.  To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to the work; and that is there, and the most pure and sincere that is anywhere to be found.  I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older; for, methinks, custom allows to age more liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man’s self.  That cannot fall out here, which I often see elsewhere, that the work and the artificer contradict one another:  “Can a man of such sober conversation have written so foolish a book?” Or “Do so learned writings proceed from a man of so weak conversation?” He who talks at a very ordinary rate, and writes rare matter, ’tis to say that his capacity is borrowed and not his own.  A learned man is not learned in all things:  but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself; here my book and I go hand in hand together.  Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work, without reference to the workman; here they cannot:  who touches the one, touches the other.  He who shall judge of it without knowing him, will more wrong himself than me; he who does know him, gives me all the satisfaction I desire.  I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus much from the public approbation, as to make men of understanding perceive that I was capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I deserved to have been assisted by a better memory.

Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent, and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not as the conscience of an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man; always adding this clause, not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission, that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely and simply referring myself to the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution.  I do not teach; I only relate.