th, 'tis a subject upon which I
exercise my judgment as much as upon any other. The world looks always
opposite; I turn my sight inwards, and there fix and employ it. I have
no other business but myself, I am eternally meditating upon myself,
considering and tasting myself. Other men's thoughts are ever wandering
abroad, if they will but see it; they are still going forward:

"Nemo in sese tentat descendere;"

["No one thinks of descending into himself."
--Persius, iv. 23.]

for my part, I circulate in myself. This capacity of trying the truth,
whatever it be, in myself, and this free humour of not over easily
subjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; for the strongest and
most general imaginations I have are those that, as a man may say, were
born with me; they are natural and entirely my own. I produced them
crude and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little
troubled and imperfect; I have since established and fortified them with
the authority of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom I
have found of the same judgment: they have given me faster hold, and a
more manifest fruition and possession of that I had before embraced. The
reputation that every one pretends to of vivacity and promptness of wit,
I seek in regularity; the glory they pretend to from a striking and
signal action, or some particular excellence, I claim from order,
correspondence, and tranquillity of opinions and manners:

"Omnino si quidquam est decorum, nihil est profecto magis, quam
aequabilitas universae vitae, tum singularum actionum, quam
conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans, omittas tuam."

["If anything be entirely decorous, nothing certainly can be more so
than an equability alike in the whole life and in every particular
action; which thou canst not possibly observe if, imitating other
men's natures, thou layest aside thy own."--Cicero, De Of., i. 31.]

Here, then, you see to what degree I find myself guilty of this first
part, that I said was the vice of presumption. As to the second, which
consists in not having a sufficient esteem for others, I know not whether
or no I can so well excuse myself; but whatever comes on't I am resolved
to speak the truth. And whether, peradventure, it be that the continual
frequentation I have had with the humours of the ancients, and the idea
of those great souls of past ages,