"'Tis easy to bring the Hero's Case home to our-selves; and see, in the ordinary Circumstances of Life, how Love, Ambition, and the gayer Tribe of Fancys (as well as the gloomy and dark Specters of another sort) prevail over our Mind, 'Tis easy to observe how they work on us, when we refuse to be before-hand with 'em, and bestow repeated Lessons on the encroaching Sorceresses."
Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author  [collected in Characteristics]
A complicated publication history. At least 10 entries in ESTC (1710, 1711, 1714, 1733, 1744, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1773, 1790).<br>
<br> 
See <u>Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author</u> (London: John Morphew, 1710). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T92975">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=-PEQAAAAYAAJ">Link to Google Books</a>&gt;<br>
<br>
See also "Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author" in <u>Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes.</u> (London: John Darby, 1711). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T30440">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;<br>
<br>
Some text drawn from ECCO and Google Books; also from Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. <u>Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times</u>, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Klein's text is based on the British Library's copy of the second edition of 1714. [Texts to be collated.]