VI. Of Sextus, mildness and the pattern of a family governed with
paternal affection; and a purpose to live according to nature: to be
grave without affectation: to observe carefully the several dispositions
of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, nor unseasonably to set
upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems,
and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man
might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his
company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and
fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: who
also had a proper happiness and faculty, rationally and methodically to
find out, and set in order all necessary determinations and instructions
for a man's life. A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or
any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the
Stoic _Apathia_, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted:
ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very
learned, and yet making little show.
VII. From Alexander the Grammarian, to be un-reprovable myself, and not
reproachfully to reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism, or
any false pronunciation, but dextrously by way of answer, or testimony,
or confirmation of the same matter (taking no notice of the word) to
utter it as it should have been spoken; or by some other such close and
indirect admonition, handsomely and civilly to tell him of it.
VIII. Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a
tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called
εὐπατρίδαι, _i.e._ nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void
of natural affection.
IX. Of Alexander the Platonic, not often nor without great necessity to
say, or to write to any man in a letter, 'I am not at leisure'; nor in
this manner still to put off those duties, which we owe to our friends
and acquaintances (to every one in his kind) under pretence of urgent
affairs.
X. Of Catulus, not to contemn any friend's expostulation, though unjust,
but to strive to reduce him to his former disposition: freely and
heartily to speak well of all my masters upon any occasion, as it is
reported of Domitius, and Athenodotus: and to love my children with true
affection.