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The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 05 by Michel de Montaigne
page 40 of 59 (67%)
pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things,
which yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift,
and nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they are
nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they
know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not
yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe
how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon
conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and
that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold,
and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and
clear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue
or another, and, if he be dumb, by signs--

"Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;"

["Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express it
soon present themselves." ("The words will not reluctantly follow the
thing preconceived.")--Horace, De Arte Poetica. v. 311]

And as another as poetically says in his prose:

"Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,"

["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves
readily." ("When things have taken possession of the mind, the
words trip.")--Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.]

and this other.

"Ipsae res verbs rapiunt."
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