Note 6 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA.
Reading edition
In one of his early essays, he says, "Exactly fifteen days ago I completed my thirty-ninth year" (liv. I. chap. 19.); and in a former one he says, "Having lately retired to my own residence, resolved, as well as I can, to trouble myself with nothing but how to pass in repose what of life is left to me, it appeared to me that I could not do better than to allow my mind, in full idleness, to discourse with itself, and repose in itself, which I hoped it would easily do, having become slower and riper with time; but I find, on the contrary, that, like a runaway horse, it takes a far swifter course for itself than it would for another, and brings forth so many fantastic and chimerical ideas, one after the other, without order or end, that, for the sake of contemplating their folly and strangeness at my ease, I have resolved to put them down, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself."