enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I am
very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself
wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb
and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into
it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over
which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I
so much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to
covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man ought
to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:
and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But against
such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis my
opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself
to himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I
should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:

"Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."

["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
--Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]

Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
would peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to it
at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
immediately be disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, I
have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about