To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to the rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect degree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of the second I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous to curb the desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue, or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work; for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions, if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great thanks that I am free from several vices: "Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:" ["If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body." --Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.] I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I know not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or whether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so: "Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit Formidolosus, pars violentior Natalis hors, seu tyrannus Hesperive Capricornus undae:" ["Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea." --Horace, Od., ii. 117.]