_Pand._ Aye, to the leavening: but here's yet in the word hereafter, the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too; or you may chance to burn your lips. TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. I passed over fourteen years of the Doctor's boyhood and adolescence, as it may be remembered was stated in the twenty-fifth Chapter; but I must not in like manner pass over the years that intervened between his first acquaintance with Deborah Bacon, and the happy day whereon the bells of St. George's welcomed her to Doncaster as his bride. It would be as inconsistent with my design to pretermit this latter portion of his life, as it would have been incompatible with my limits to have recorded the details of the former, worthy to be recorded as they were. If any of my readers should be impatient on this occasion, and think that I ought to have proceeded to the marriage without delay, or at least to the courtship, I must admonish them in the words of a Turkish saying, that “hurry comes from the Devil, and slow advancing from Allah.”—“Needs must go when the Devil drives,” says the proverb: but the Devil shall never drive me. I will take care never to go at such a rate, “as if haste had maimed speed by overrunning it at starting.” “The just composer of a legitimate piece,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “is like an able traveller, who exactly measures his journey, considers his ground, premeditates his stages and intervals of relaxation and intention, to the very conclusion of his undertaking, that he happily arrives where he first proposed at setting out. He is not presently upon the spur, or in his full career, but walks his steed leisurely out of the stable, settles himself in his stirrups, and when fair road and season offer, puts on perhaps to a round trot, thence into a gallop, and after a while takes up. As down, or meadow, or shady lane present themselves, he accordingly suits his pace, favours his palfrey, and is sure not to bring him puffing, and in a heat, into his last inn.” Yes, Reader, ——matter needless, of importless burden[1] may as little be expected to flow from the slit of my pen, as to “divide the lips” of wise Ulysses. On the other hand what is needful, what is weighty in its import, let who will be impatient, must not be left unsaid. _varie fila a varie tele Uopo mi son, che tutte ordire intendo._[2] [Footnote 1: TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.] [Footnote 2: ARIOSTO.]