eason that he
make use of his right of amplification, and to wire-draw my vices as far
as he can; attack has its rights beyond justice; and let him make the
roots of those errors I have laid open to him shoot up into trees: let
him make his use, not only of those I am really affected with, but also
of those that only threaten me; injurious vices, both in quality and
number; let him cudgel me that way. I should willingly follow the
example of the philosopher Bion: Antigonus being about to reproach him
with the meanness of his birth, he presently cut him short with this
declaration: "I am," said he, "the son of a slave, a butcher, and
branded, and of a strumpet my father married in the lowest of his
fortune; both of them were whipped for offences they had committed. An
orator bought me, when a child, and finding me a pretty and hopeful boy,
bred me up, and when he died left me all his estate, which I have
transported into this city of Athens, and here settled myself to the
study of philosophy. Let the historians never trouble themselves with
inquiring about me: I will tell them about it." A free and generous
confession enervates reproach and disarms slander. So it is that, one
thing with another, I fancy men as often commend as undervalue me beyond
reason; as, methinks also, from my childhood, in rank and degree of
honour, they have given me a place rather above than below my right.
I should find myself more at ease in a country where these degrees were
either regulated or not regarded. Amongst men, when an altercation about
the precedence either of walking or sitting exceeds three replies, 'tis
reputed uncivil. I never stick at giving or taking place out of rule, to
avoid the trouble of such ceremony; and never any man had a mind to go
before me, but I permitted him to do it.

Besides this profit I make of writing of myself, I have also hoped for
this other advantage, that if it should fall out that my humour should
please or jump with those of some honest man before I die, he would then
desire and seek to be acquainted with me. I have given him a great deal
of made-way; for all that he could have, in many years, acquired by close
familiarity, he has seen in three days in this memorial, and more surely
and exactly. A pleasant fancy: many things that I would not confess to
any one in particular, I deliver to the public, and send my best friends
to a bookseller's shop, there to inform themselves concerning my most