You indeed, dear reader, would express no displeasure if, instead of proceeding in the straight line of my purpose, I should sometimes find it expedient to retrograde; or, borrowing a word of barbarous Latin coined in the musician's mint, _cancrizare_, which may be rendered to crab-grade. For as Roger North says, when, at the commencement of his incomparable account of his brother the Lord Keeper's life, he confesses that it would be hard to lead a thread in good order of time through it—“there are many and various incidents to be remembered, which will interfere, and make it necessary to step back sometimes, and then again forwards;—and in this manner I hope to evacuate my mind of every matter and thing I know and can remember materially concerning him. And if some things are set down which many may think too trivial, let it be considered that the smallest incidents are often as useful to be known, though not so diverting, as the greater, and profit must always share with entertainment.” I am not however side-ling toward my object crab-like; still less am I starting back from it, like a lobster, whose spring upon any alarm is stern-foremost: nor am I going I know not where, like the three Princes Zoile, Bariandel and Lyriamandre, when, having taken leave of Olivier King of England, to go in search of Rosicler, they took ship at London _sans dessein d'aller plustôt en un lieu qu'en un autre_. Nor like the more famous Prince Don Florisel and Don Falanges, when having gone on board a small vessel, _y mandada por ellos en lo alto de la mar meter, hazen con los marineros que no hagan otro camino mas de aquel que la nao movido por la fuerza de los ayres, quisiesse hazer, queriendo yr a buscar con la aventura lo que a ella hallar se permitia segun la poca certinidad que para la demanda podian llevar._ I should say falsely were I to say with Petrarch, _Vommene in guiza d'orbo senza luce, Che non sa ove si vada, e pur si parte._ But I may say with the Doctor's name-sake Daniel de Bosola in Webster's tragedy,[4] “I look no higher than I can reach: they are the gods that must ride on winged horses. A lawyer's mule, of a slow pace, will both suit my disposition and business: for mark me, when a man's mind rides faster than his horse can gallop, they quickly both tire.”—Moreover ———This I hold A secret worth its weight in gold To those who write as I write now, Not to mind where they go, or how, Thro' ditch, thro' bog, o'er hedge and stile, Make it but worth the reader's while, And keep a passage fair and plain Always to bring him back again.[5] [Footnote 4: DUCHESS OF MALFI.] [Footnote 5: CHURCHILL.] “You may run from major to minor,” says Mrs. Bray in one of her letters to Dr. Southey, “and through a thousand changes, so long as you fall into the subject at last, and bring back the ear to the right key at the close.”