hit upon something when I write, that seems quaint and sprightly to me, though it will appear dull and heavy to another.—­But let us leave these fine compliments; every one talks thus of himself according to his talent.  But when I come to speak, I am already so lost that I know not what I was about to say, and in such cases a stranger often finds it out before me.  If I should make erasure so often as this inconvenience befalls me, I should make clean work; occasion will, at some other time, lay it as visible to me as the light, and make me wonder what I should stick at.

CHAPTER XI

OF PROGNOSTICATIONS

For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before the coming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we see that Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he has these words: 

          “Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur,
          non modo nostro aetate, sed jam diu; ut nihil
          possit esse contemptius?”

["What is the reason that the oracles at Delphi are no longer uttered:  not merely in this age of ours, but for a long time past, insomuch that nothing is more in contempt?” —­Cicero, De Divin., ii. 57.]

But as to the other prognostics, calculated from the anatomy of beasts at sacrifices (to which purpose Plato does, in part, attribute the natural constitution of the intestines of the beasts themselves), the scraping of poultry, the flight of birds—­

          “Aves quasdam . . . rerum augurandarum
          causa natas esse putamus.”

     ["We think some sorts of birds are purposely created to serve
     the purposes of augury.”—­Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 64.]

claps of thunder, the overflowing of rivers—­

          “Multa cernunt Aruspices, multa Augures provident,
          multa oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus,
          multa somniis, multa portentis.”

     ["The Aruspices discern many things, the Augurs foresee many things,
     many things are announced by oracles, many by vaticinations, many by
     dreams, many by portents.”—­Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 65.]

—­and others of the like nature, upon which antiquity founded most of their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished them.  And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not enough to do to digest the present)—­

               “Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi,
               Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,
               Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades?.... 
               Sit subitum, quodcumque paras; sit coeca futuri
               Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti.”