pretty indifferent to me; and yet I have acquired a quietness of mind, which by fits improves into a certain degree of cheerfulness, enough to make me just so good humoured as to wish that world well. My friendships are increased by new ones, yet no part of the warmth I felt for the old is diminished. Aversions I have none, but to knaves, (for fools I have learned to bear with) and such I cannot be commonly civil to; for I think those men are next to knaves who converse with them. The greatest man in power of this sort shall hardly make me bow to him, unless I had a personal obligation, and that I will take care not to have. The top pleasure of my life is one I learned from you, both how to gain, and how to use the freedom of friendship, with men much my superiours. To have pleased great men, according to Horace, is a praise; but not to have flattered them, and yet not have displeased them, is a greater. I have carefully avoided all intercourse with poets and scribblers, unless where by great chance I have found a modest one. By these means I have had no quarrels with any personally; none have been enemies, but who were also strangers to me; and as there is no great need for an éclaircissement with such, whatever they writ or said I never retaliated, not only never seeming to know, but often really never knowing, any thing of the matter. There are very few things that give me the anxiety of a wish; the strongest I have would be to pass my days with you, and a few such as you: but fate has dispersed them all about the world; and I hnd to wish it is as vain, as to wish to see the millennium and the kingdom of the just upon earth.
If I have sinned in my long silence, consider there
