If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the Muses to make use of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that he does not know so well as I the value of the sport, the pleasure, and the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is ridiculous.  I live from day to day, and, with reverence be it spoken, I only live for myself; there all my designs terminate.  I studied, when young, for ostentation; since, to make myself a little wiser; and now for my diversion, but never for any profit.  A vain and prodigal humour I had after this sort of furniture, not only for the supplying my own need, but, moreover, for ornament and outward show, I have since quite cured myself of.

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them; but every good has its ill; ’tis a pleasure that is not pure and clean, no more than others:  it has its inconveniences, and great ones too.  The soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows heavy and sombre.  I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.

These have been my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak not of those I owe to the world by civil obligation.

CHAPTER IV.

OF DIVERSION

I was once employed in consoling a lady truly afflicted.  Most of their mournings are artificial and ceremonious: 

         “Uberibus semper lacrymis, semperque paratis,
          In statione subatque expectantibus illam,
          Quo jubeat manare modo.”

["A woman has ever a fountain of tears ready to gush up whenever
she requires to make use of them.”—­Juvenal, vi. 272.]

A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the evil is exasperated by discussion.  We see, in common discourse, that what I have indifferently let fall from me, if any one takes it up to controvert it, I justify it with the best arguments I have; and much more a thing wherein I had a real interest.  And besides, in so doing you enter roughly upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a physician to his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did any ill-looking, morose physician do anything to purpose.  On the contrary, then, a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and express some approbation of their sorrow.  By this intelligence you obtain credit to proceed further, and by a facile and insensible gradation fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure.  I, whose aim it was principally to gull the company who had their eyes fixed upon me, took it into my head only to palliate the disease.  And indeed I have found by experience that I have an unlucky hand in persuading.  My arguments