"Velut aegri somnia, vanae
Finguntur species."

["As a sick man's dreams, creating vain phantasms."--
Hor., De Arte Poetica, 7.]

The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said--

"Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat."

["He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere."--Martial, vii. 73.]

When I lately retired to my own house, with a resolution, as much as
possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend
in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I
fancied I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure
to entertain and divert itself, which I now hoped it might henceforth do,
as being by time become more settled and mature; but I find--

"Variam semper dant otia mentem,"

["Leisure ever creates varied thought."--Lucan, iv. 704]

that, quite contrary, it is like a horse that has broke from his rider,
who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman
would put him to, and creates me so many chimaeras and fantastic
monsters, one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at
leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to
commit them to writing, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself.