vious or acknowledged into which most men, some time or other,
are not apt to run.

For instance, nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of
talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people together
where some one among them hath not been predominant in that kind, to the
great constraint and disgust of all the rest. But among such as deal in
multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober deliberate talker,
who proceedeth with much thought and caution, maketh his preface,
brancheth out into several digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him
in mind of another story, which he promiseth to tell you when this is
done; cometh back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind
some person's name, holdeth his head, complaineth of his memory; the
whole company all this while in suspense; at length, says he, it is no
matter, and so goes on. And, to crown the business, it perhaps proveth
at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before; or, at best,
some insipid adventure of the relater.

Another general fault in conversation is that of those who affect to talk
of themselves. Some, without any ceremony, will run over the history of
their lives; will relate the annals of their diseases, with the several
symptoms and circumstances of them; will enumerate the hardships and
injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in love, or in law.
Others are more dexterous, and with great art will lie on the watch to
hook in their own praise. They will call a witness to remember they
always foretold what would happen in such a case, but none would believe
them; they advised such a man from the beginning, and told him the
consequences just as they happened, but he would have his own way. Others
make a vanity of telling their faults. They are the strangest men in the
world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a folly; they have lost
abundance of advantages by it; but, if you would give them the world,
they cannot help it; there is something in their nature that abhors
insincerity and constraint; with many other unsufferable topics of the
same altitude.

Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think he
is so to others, without once making this easy and obvious reflection,
that his affairs can have no more weight with other men than theirs have
with him; and how little that is he is sensible enough.

Where company hath met, I often have observed two per