The very same remark applies in the same force to the interesting,
though the far less interesting, Treatise on the Quincuncial Plantations
of the Ancients. There is the same attention to oddities, to the
remotenesses and "minutiae" of vegetable terms,--the same entireness of
subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below,
and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity,
quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves,
in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first
turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the
last seven paragraphs of Chap. V. beginning with the words "More
considerables," etc. But it is time for me to be in bed, in the words of
Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear, as a fair specimen of his
manner.--"But the quincunx of heaven--(the Hyades or five stars about
the horizon at midnight at that time)--runs low, and 'tis time we close
the five ports of knowledge: we are unwilling to spin out our waking
thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth
precogitations,--making tables of cobwebbes, and wildernesses of
handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our
Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past
their first sleep in Persia.
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