'My memory grows worse and worse every day. I must _fain for the time to come_ (collateral sounds), for _hitherto, thank God, nothing has happened much amiss_, to avoid all preparation, for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must be forced to insist. To _be tied and bound to a thing_ puts _me_ quite out, and especially where I have to depend upon so weak an instrument as my memory. I never could read this story without being offended at it, with as it were _a personal_ and natural resentment.' The reader will note that the question here is of _style_, or method, and of this author's style in particular, and of his special embarrassments. 'Lyncestes _accused of conspiracy against Alexander_, the day that he was brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard in his defence, had prepared a _studied speech_, of which, _haggling and stammering_, he pronounced _some words_. As he was becoming more perplexed and struggling with his memory, and _trying to recollect himself_, the soldiers that stood _nearest_ killed him with their spears, looking upon his confusion and silence as a confession of his guilt: very fine, indeed! The place, the spectators, the expectation, would astound a man _even though were there no object in his mind but to speak well_; but WHAT _when 'tis an harangue upon which his life depends_?' You that happen to be of my ear, it is my style that we are speaking of, and there is my story. '_For my part the very being tied to what I am to say, is enough to loose me from it_'--that is the cause of his wandering--'_The more I trust to my memory_, the more do I put myself out of my own power, so _much as to find it in my own countenance_, and have _sometimes been very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was bound_, whereas _my design is_ to manifest in speaking a _perfect nonchalance_, both of face and accent, and _casual and unpremeditated motions_, as rising from present occasions, _choosing rather to say nothing to purpose, than to show that_ I came _prepared to speak well_; a thing especially unbecoming _a man of my profession_. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will satisfy; a man very often absurdly strips himself to his doublet to leap no further _than he would have done in his gown_.' [Perhaps the reflecting scholar will recollect to have seen an instance of this magnificent preparation for saying something to the purpose, attended with similarly lame conclusions; but, if he does not, the story which follows may tend to refresh his memory on this point.] 'It is recorded of the orator Curio, that _when he proposed the division of his oration_ into three or four parts, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or two more.' A much more illustrious speaker, who spoke under circumstances not very unlike those in which the poor conspirator above noted made his haggling and fatal attempts