sober judge to whom we may appeal. Yet, O my God (in whose presence
I now without hurt may remember this), all this unhappily I learnt
willingly with great delight, and for this was pronounced a hopeful
boy.

Bear with me, my God, while I say somewhat of my wit, Thy gift,
and on what dotages I wasted it. For a task was set me, troublesome
enough to my soul, upon terms of praise or shame, and fear of stripes,
to speak the words of Juno, as she raged and mourned that she could
not

"This Trojan prince from Latinum turn."

Which words I had heard that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to
go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in
prose much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most
applauded, in whom the passions of rage and grief were most
preeminent, and clothed in the most fitting language, maintaining
the dignity of the character. What is it to me, O my true life, my
God, that my declamation was applauded above so many of my own age and
class? is not all this smoke and wind? and was there nothing else
whereon to exercise my wit and tongue? Thy praises, Lord, Thy
praises might have stayed the yet tender shoot of my heart by the prop
of Thy Scriptures; so had it not trailed away amid these empty
trifles, a defiled prey for the fowls of the air. For in more ways
than one do men sacrifice to the rebellious angels.

But what marvel that I was thus carried away to vanities, and went
out from Thy presence, O my God, when men were set before me as
models, who, if in relating some action of theirs, in itself not