I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to bring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to marshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle our inconstancy, and set it in order.  I do not only find it hard to piece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly to design each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variform they are with diverse lights.  That which is remarked for rare in Perseus, king of Macedon, “that his mind, fixing itself to no one condition, wandered in all sorts of living, and represented manners so wild and erratic that it was neither known to himself or any other what kind of man he was,” seems almost to fit all the world; and, especially, I have seen another of his make, to whom I think this conclusion might more properly be applied; no moderate settledness, still running headlong from one extreme to another, upon occasions not to be guessed at; no line of path without traverse and wonderful contrariety:  no one quality simple and unmixed; so that the best guess men can one day make will be, that he affected and studied to make himself known by being not to be known.  A man had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as there are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who hazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship; for ’tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for our own good.  I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are more than his good ones:  Plato requires three things in him who will examine the soul of another:  knowledge, benevolence, boldness.

I was sometimes asked, what I should have thought myself fit for, had any one designed to make use of me, while I was of suitable years: 

         “Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, aemula necdum
          Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus:” 

["Whilst better blood gave me vigour, and before envious old age
whitened and thinned my temples.”—­AEneid, V. 415.]

“for nothing,” said I; and I willingly excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others.  But I had told the truth to my master,—­[Was this Henri vi.?  D.W.]—­and had regulated his manners, if he had so pleased, not in gross, by scholastic lessons, which I understand not, and from which I see no true reformation spring in those that do; but by observing them by leisure, at all opportunities, and simply and naturally judging them as an eye-witness, distinctly one by one; giving him to understand upon what terms he was in the common opinion, in opposition to his flatterers.  There is none of us who would not be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are with that sort of canaille.  How, if Alexander, that great king and philosopher, cannot defend himself from them!