In
this view it takes even rank with Montaigne's Essays, with Luther's
Table Talk, the Life of John Bunyan, with Rousseau's Confessions, and
the Life of Dr. Franklin. In opening the book at random, we have
fallen on his reflections on the death of an early friend.
"O madness, which knowest not how to love men like men! I
fretted, sighed, wept, was distracted, had neither rest nor counsel.
For I bore about a shattered and bleeding soul, impatient of being
borne by me, yet where to repose it I found not. All things looked
ghastly; yea the very light; whatsoever was not what he was, was
revolting and hateful, except groaning and tears. In those alone
found I a little refreshment. I fled out of my country; for so
should mine eyes look less for him where they were not wont to see
him. And thus from Thagaste I came to Carthage. Times lose no time;
nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they work strange
operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by day, and
by coming and going introduced into my mind other imaginations and
other remembrances; and little by little patched me up again with my
old kind of delights unto which that my sorrow gave way.
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