As his works are now scarcely perused but by antiquaries, I thought it might not be unacceptable to my readers to present them with some specimens of his manner, in single thoughts and phrases; and in some few passages of greater length, chiefly of a narrative description. I shall arrange them as I casually find them in my book of extracts, without being solicitous to specify the particular work from which they are taken.
_Pyramids_.--"The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders."
_Virtue in a Short Person_.--"His soul had but a short diocese to visit, and therefore might the better attend the effectual informing thereof."
_Intellect in a very Tall One_.--"Ofttimes such who are built four stories high, are observed to have little in their cockloft."
_Naturals_.--"Their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room."
_Negroes_.--"The image of God cut in ebony."
_School-Divinity_.--"At the first it will be as welcome to thee as a prison, and their very solutions will seem knots unto thee."
_Mr. Perkins the Divine_.--"He had a capacious head, with angles winding and roomy enough to lodge all controversial intricacies."
_The same_.--"He would pronounce the word _Damn_ with such an emphasis as left a doleful echo in his auditors' ears a good while after."
_Judges in Capital Cases_.--"O let him take heed how he strikes that hath a dead hand."
_Memory_.--"Philosophers place it in the rear of the head, and it seems the mine of memory lies there, because there men naturally dig for it, scratching it when they are at a loss."
_Fancy_.--"It is the most boundless and restless faculty of the soul; for while the Understanding and the Will are kept, as it were, _in libera custodia_ to their objects of _verum et bonum_, the Fancy is free from all engagements: it digs without spade, sails without ship, flies without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed; in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world; by a kind of omnipotency creating and annihilating things in an instant; and things divorced in Nature are married in Fancy as in a lawless place."
