m of a humour cheerfully to
frequent great company, provided it be by intervals and at my own time:
but this softness of judgment whereof I speak ties me perforce to
solitude. Even at home, amidst a numerous family, and in a house
sufficiently frequented, I see people enough, but rarely such with whom I
delight to converse; and I there reserve both for myself and others an
unusual liberty: there is in my house no such thing as ceremony,
ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such other
troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O the servile and
importunate custom!). Every one there governs himself according to his
own method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and
shut up in my closet, without any offence to my guests.

The men whose society and familiarity I covet are those they call sincere
and able men; and the image of these makes me disrelish the rest. It is,
if rightly taken, the rarest of our forms, and a form that we chiefly owe
to nature. The end of this commerce is simply privacy, frequentation and
conference, the exercise of souls, without other fruit. In our
discourse, all subjects are alike to me; let there be neither weight, nor
depth, 'tis all one: there is yet grace and pertinency; all there is
tinted with a mature and constant judgment, and mixed with goodness,
freedom, gaiety, and friendship. 'Tis not only in talking of the affairs
of kings and state that our wits discover their force and beauty, but
every whit as much in private conferences. I understand my men even by
their silence and smiles; and better discover them, perhaps, at table
than in the council. Hippomachus said, very well, "that he could know
the good wrestlers by only seeing them walk in the street." If learning
please to step into our talk, it shall not be rejected, not magisterial,
imperious, and importunate, as-it commonly is, but suffragan and docile
itself; we there only seek to pass away our time; when we have a mind to
be instructed and preached to, we will go seek this in its throne; please
let it humble itself to us for the nonce; for, useful and profitable as
it is, I imagine that, at need, we may manage well enough without it, and
do our business without its assistance. A well-descended soul, and
practised in the conversation of men, will of herself render herself
sufficiently agreeable; art is nothing but the counterpart and register
of what such souls produce.

The conv