without pursuing them to the utmost, he had his commission of general
taken from him, very honourably upon such an account, and for the shame
it was to them upon necessity afterwards to restore him to his command,
and so to manifest how much upon him depended their safety and honour;
victory like a shadow attending him wherever he went; and indeed the
prosperity of his country, as being from him derived, died with him.




CHAPTER XXXVII

OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS

This faggoting up of so many divers pieces is so done that I never set
pen to paper but when I have too much idle time, and never anywhere but
at home; so that it is compiled after divers interruptions and intervals,
occasions keeping me sometimes many months elsewhere. As to the rest,
I never correct my first by any second conceptions; I, peradventure, may
alter a word or so, but 'tis only to vary the phrase, and not to destroy
my former meaning. I have a mind to represent the progress of my
humours, and that every one may see each piece as it came from the forge.
I could wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice of the course
of my mutations. A servant of mine whom I employed to transcribe for me,
thought he had got a prize by stealing several pieces from me, wherewith
he was best pleased; but it is my comfort that he will be no greater a
gainer than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older by seven
or eight years since I began; nor has it been without same new
acquisition: I have, in that time, by the liberality of years, been
acquainted with the stone: their commerce and long converse do not well