grown very numerous of late, and I know very well the judicious
world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive, therefore,
as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as
with wells. A person with good eyes can see to the bottom of the
deepest, provided any water be there; and that often when there is
nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though
it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass, however, for
wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous
dark.

I am now trying an experiment very frequent among modern authors,
which is to write upon nothing, when the subject is utterly
exhausted to let the pen still move on; by some called the ghost of
wit, delighting to walk after the death of its body. And to say the
truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than
that of discerning when to have done. By the time that an author
has written out a book, he and his readers are become old
acquaintance, and grow very loathe to part; so that I have sometimes
known it to be in writing as in visiting, where the ceremony of
taking leave has employed more time than the whole conversation
before. The conclusion of a treatise resembles the conclusion of
human life, which has sometimes been compared to the end of a feast,
where few are satisfied to depart ut plenus vitae conviva. For men
will sit down after the fullest meal, though it be only to dose or
to sleep out the rest of the day. But in this latter I differ
extremely from other writers, and shall be too proud if, by all my
labours, I can have any ways contributed to the repose of mankind in
times so turbulent and unquiet as these. Neither do I think such an
employment so very alien from the office of a wit as some would
suppose; for among a very polite nation in Greece {157} there were