His Essays, the work by which he is best known, were in their origin merely jottings gradually cohered and enlarged into the series we know.

Ideas have a fixed meaning, and cohere in bodies of 'universal' truth, quite irrespective of whether any particular mind harbours them or not.

It is taken from these by an iron-hand or comb, which has a motion similar to that of scratching, and takes the wool off the cards longitudinally in respect to the fibres or staple, producing a continued line loosely cohering, called the Rove or Roving.