I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were
in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they
begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were
then doing; that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned
in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body,
perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; and, for aught they knew
to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn
from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost; Had they duly
weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, I am verily
persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from
that in which the reader is likely to see me.
