'This _medley_ is a little from my subject, I go out of my way but 'tis rather _by licence than oversight_. My fancies _follow_ one another, _but sometimes at a great distance_, and _look towards one another_, but 'tis with an _oblique glance_. I have read a DIALOGUE of PLATO of such a _motley and fantastic_ composition. The _beginning was about love_, and all the rest ABOUT RHETORIC. _They_ stick not (that is, the ancients) at these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves to be carried away at the pleasure of the winds; or at least to _seem_ as if they were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter, they often denote it _by some mark only_, as those other titles _Andria Eunuchus_, or these, _Sylla, Cicero, Torquatus_. I love _a poetic march_, by leaps and skips, 'tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble; and _a little demoniacal_. There are places in _Plutarch_ where _he_ forgets his theme, where the proposition of _his_ argument is only found _incidentally_, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Do but observe his meanders in the Demon of Socrates. How beautiful are his variations and digressions; and then _most of all, when they seem to be_ fortuitous, [hear] and introduced _for want of heed. 'Tis the indiligent reader_ that loses my subject--_not I. There will always be found some words_ or _other in a corner that are to the purpose, though it lie very close_ [that is the unfailing rule]. I ramble about indiscreetly and tumultously: my style and my _wit_ wander at the same rate, [he wanders _wittingly_]. A _little folly_ is _desirable_ in him _that will not be guilty of stupidity_, say the precepts, and much more the _examples_ of our masters. A thousand poets flag and languish after a _prosaic manner_; but the best old prose, and I strew it here up and down _indifferently_ for verse, shines throughout with the vigor and boldness of poetry, and represents some air of its fury. Certainly, prose must _yield_ the pre-eminence in speaking. "The poet," says Plato, "when set upon the muse's tripod, pours out with fury, whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe of a fountain, _without considering and pausing upon what he says_, and things come from him of _various colors_, of _contrary substance_, and with an irregular torrent": he himself (Plato) is all over poetical, and all the old theology (_as the learned inform us) is poetry_, and the _first philosophy_, is the origiual language of the gods.