But then, in the dramatic exhibition, the other side comes in too:--
I will not do't;
Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth,
And by my body's action, teach my mind
_A most inherent baseness._
It is the same poet who says in another place:--
Almost my nature is subdued to that it works in.
'But to return,' as our author himself says, after his complimentary
notice of the king's book, accompanied with that emphatic promise to
give an account of himself upon a full occasion, and we have here,
apparently, a longer digression to apologize for, and return from;
but, in the book we are considering, it is, in fact, rather apparent
than real, as are most of the author's digressions, and casual
introductions of impertinent matter; for, in fact, the exterior order
of the discourse is often a submission to the _occasion_, and is not
so essential as the author's apparent concern about it would lead us
to infer; indeed he has left dispersed directions to have this
treatise broken up, and recomposed in a more lively manner, upon a
full occasion, and when time shall serve; for, at present, this too is
chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof.
And in marking out the grounds in human life, then lying waste, or
covered with superstitious and empirical arts and inventions, in
merely showing the fields into which the inventor of this new
instrument of observation and inference by rule, was then proposing to
introduce it, and in presenting this new report, and this so startling
proposition, in those differing aspects and shifting lights, and under
those various divisions which the art of delivery and tradition under
such circumstances appeared to prescribe; having come, in the order of
his report, to that main ground of the good which the will and
appetite of man aspires to, and the direction thereto,--this so
labored ground of philosophy,--when it was found that the new
scientific platform of good, included--not the exclusive good of the
individual form only, but that of those 'larger wholes,' of which men
are _constitutionally_ parts and members, and the special DUTY,--for
that is the specific name of this principle of integrity in the
_human_ kind, that is the name of that larger law, that spiritual
principle, which informs and claims the parts, and conserves the
larger form which is the worthier,--when it was found that this part
included the particular duty of every man in his _place, vocation_,
and _profession_, as well as the common duty of men as men, surely it
was natural enough to glance here, at that _particular profession and
vocation_ of authorship, and the claims of the respective _places_ of
_king_ and _subject_ in that regard, as well as at the _duty_ of the
_king_, and the superior advantages of a government of laws in
general, as being more in accordance with the order of nature, than
that other mode of government referred to. It was natural enough,
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