obstinacy in keeping myself so upright and open as I do,
without any consideration of others; and methinks I am a little too free,
where I ought least to be so, and that I grow hot by the opposition of
respect; and it may be also, that I suffer myself to follow the
propension of my own nature for want of art; using the same liberty,
speech, and countenance towards great persons, that I bring with me from
my own house: I am sensible how much it declines towards incivility and
indiscretion but, besides that I am so bred, I have not a wit supple
enough to evade a sudden question, and to escape by some evasion, nor to
feign a truth, nor memory enough to retain it so feigned; nor, truly,
assurance enough to maintain it, and so play the brave out of weakness.
And therefore it is that I abandon myself to candour, always to speak as
I think, both by complexion and design, leaving the event to fortune.
Aristippus was wont to say, that the principal benefit he had extracted
from philosophy was that he spoke freely and openly to all.

Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and without which the judgment can
very hardly perform its office: for my part I have none at all. What any
one will propound to me, he must do it piecemeal, for to answer a speech
consisting of several heads I am not able. I could not receive a
commission by word of mouth without a note-book. And when I have a
speech of consequence to make, if it be long, I am reduced to the
miserable necessity of getting by heart word for word, what I am to say;
I should otherwise have neither method nor assurance, being in fear that
my memory would play me a slippery trick. But this way is no less
difficult to me than the other; I must have three hours to learn three
verses. And besides, in a work of a man's own, the liberty and authority
of altering the order, of changing a word, incessantly varying the
matter, makes it harder to stick in the memory of the author. The more
I mistrust it the worse it is; it serves me best by chance; I must
solicit it negligently; for if I press it, 'tis confused, and after it
once begins to stagger, the more I sound it, the more it is perplexed;
it serves me at its own hour, not at mine.

And the same defect I find in my memory, I find also in several other
parts. I fly command, obligation, and constraint; that which I can
otherwise naturally and easily do, if I impose it upon myself by an
express and strict injunction, I cannot do it.