This is one of the cases of which I said above, that in them I was obliged to give up and throw away conceits of the sketch, for want of connection with the main subject: for really the whole matter of the moulting of the limbs has nothing in common with the Preface, except the year of birth. "You must deviate from other authors," the plan goes on, "and glide silently over the approbation you have reaped, so that the world may see just what you are.--One expects from the Preface to a second edition a little map of products, or a harvest register of all the after-bloom which exalts the second above the first: give them the register!-- With pleasure!--First, I have corrected all typographical errors,--then all slips of the pen,--then many cacophonies of language,--moreover, verbal and real blunders enough; but the conceits and the poetical tulips I have seldom rooted out. I saw that if I did so there would be left in the world not much more of the book (because I should strike out the whole style) than the binding and the list of errata. The theologian hates juristic allusions,--the jurist, theological ones,--the physician, both,--the mathematician, all of them. I love them all. What shall one leave out or retain?--The woman is displeased with satire, the man with softening warmth, (for _coldness_ in _books_, as in _cakes of chocolate_, he holds to be proof of excellence,) and the public itself has forty-five opinions upon a chapter, as Cromwell dictated four contradictory letters to the same correspondent, merely for the sake of concealing from his scribes the purport of the one which he really despatched.----To which opinion shall an author adhere in such a disagreement?--Most properly to his own, as the world to its own.--