Delay opens new veins of thought,
the subject dismissed for a time appears with a new train of dependent
images, the accidents of reading our conversation supply new ornaments
or allusions, or mere intermission of the fatigue of thinking enables
the mind to collect new force, and make new excursions. But all those
benefits come too late for him, who, when he was weary with labour,
snatched at the recompense, and gave his work to his friends and his
enemies, as soon as impatience and pride persuaded him to conclude it.
One of the most pernicious effects of haste, is obscurity. He that teems
with a quick succession of ideas, and perceives how one sentiment
produces another, easily believes that he can clearly express what he so
strongly comprehends; he seldom suspects his thoughts of embarrassment,
while he preserves in his own memory the series of connection, or his
diction of ambiguity, while only one sense is present to his mind. Yet
if he has been employed on an abstruse, or complicated argument, he will
find, when he has awhile withdrawn his mind, and returns as a new reader
to his work, that he has only a conjectural glimpse of his own meaning,
and that to explain it to those whom he desires to instruct, he must
open his sentiments, disentangle his method, and alter his arrangement.
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