ourselves other than we truly are:
like the passion of love, that lends beauties and graces to the object,
and makes those who are caught by it, with a depraved and corrupt
judgment, consider the thing which they love other and more perfect than
it is.

I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side, that a man
should not know himself aright, or think himself less than he is; the
judgment ought in all things to maintain its rights; 'tis all the reason
in the world he should discern in himself, as well as in others, what
truth sets before him; if it be Caesar, let him boldly think himself the
greatest captain in the world. We are nothing but ceremony: ceremony
carries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold by the
branches, and quit the trunk and the body; we have taught the ladies to
blush when they hear that but named which they are not at all afraid to
do: we dare not call our members by their right names, yet are not afraid
to employ them in all sorts of debauchery: ceremony forbids us to express
by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it: reason
forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it. I find
myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony; for it neither permits a
man to speak well of himself, nor ill: we will leave her there for this
time.

They whom fortune (call it good or ill) has made to, pass their lives in
some eminent degree, may by their public actions manifest what they are;
but they whom she has only employed in the crowd, and of whom nobody will
say a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if they take
the boldness to speak of themselves to such as are interested to know
them; by the example of Lucilius:

"Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis,
Votiva pateat veluri descripta tabella
Vita senis;"

["He formerly confided his secret thoughts to his books, as to tried
friends, and for good and evil, resorted not elsewhere: hence it
came to pass, that the old man's life is there all seen as on a
votive tablet."--Horace, Sat., ii. I, 30.]

he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and there
portrayed himself such as he found himself to be:

"Nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem; aut obtrectationi fuit."

["Nor