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316 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
any thing, and other times fit to doe nothing: what
now is pleasing to me within a while after will be paineful.
There are a thousand indiscreet and casuall agitations
in me. Either a melancholy humour possesseth
me, or a cholericke passion swaieth me, which having
shaken off, sometimes frowardnesse and peevishnesse
hath predominancy, and other times gladnes and blithnesse
overrule me. If I chance to take a booke in
hand I shall in some passages perceive some excellent
graces, and which ever wound me to the soule with
delight; but let me lay it by and read him another
time ; let me turne and tosse him as I list, let me apply
and manage him as I will, I shall finde it an unknowne
and shapelesse masse. Even in my writings I shall
not at all times iinde the tracke or ayre of my first
imaginations; I wot not my selfe what I would have
said, and shall vexe and fret my selfe in correcting and
giving a new sense to them, because I have peradventure
forgotten or lost the former, which happily was better.
I doe but come and goe ; my judgement doth not
alwaies goe forward, but is ever iioting and wandering.
velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mar t, vesantente vento. 1
Much like a pettie skiffe, that's taken short
In a grand Sea, when winds doe make mad sport.
Many times (as commonly it is my hap to doe) having
for exercise and sport-sake undertaken to maintaine
an opinion contrarie to mine, my minde applying and
turning it selfe that way doth so tie me unto it, as
1 finde no more the reason of my former conceit, and
so I leave it. Where I encline, there I entertaine my
selfe howsoever it be, and am carried away by mine
owne weight. Every man could neer-hand say as
much of himselfe would he but looke into himselfe as
I doe. Preachers know that the emotion which ,surpriseth
them whilst they are in their earnest speech
doth animate them towards belief, and that being
¹ CATUL. Lyr. Epig. xxii. 12,