rsation; and therefore was to make a pure election of his company;
which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility
of that time. And it cannot be denied, though he admitted some few to
his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their
undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship, for the
most part, was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of
untouched reputation in point of integrity; and such men had a title to
his bosom.

He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts in any man;
and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and
bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in
those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been
trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in
his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant
and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied
by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having
once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till
he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in
the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it
will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and
accurately read all the Greek historians.

In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of
Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite
and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of
wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound
in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was
not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had
known nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a
college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a
less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study; and to
examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and
consent made current in vulgar conversation....

He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar
minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge, and to be
reputed a lover of all good men; and that made him too much a contemner
of those arts, which must be indulged in the transactions of human
affairs....

He had a courage of the m