No hour can be
unseasonable, no business difficult, nor pain grievous in condition of
his ease: and what either he doth or suffers, he neither cares nor
desires to have known, lest he should seem to look for thanks. If he can
therefore steal the performance of a good office unseen, the conscience
of his faithfulness herein is so much sweeter as it is more secret. In
favours done, his memory is frail; in benefits received, eternal: he
scorneth either to regard recompense or not to offer it. He is the
comfort of miseries, the guide of difficulties, the joy of life, the
treasure of earth, and no other than a good angel clothed in flesh.
OF THE TRULY NOBLE.
He stands not upon what he borrowed of his ancestors, but thinks he must
work out his own honour: and if he cannot reach the virtue of them that
gave him outward glory by inheritance, he is more abashed of his
impotency than transported with a great name. Greatness doth not make
him scornful and imperious, but rather like the fixed stars; the higher
he is, the less he desires to seem. Neither cares he so much for pomp
and frothy ostentation as for the solid truth of nobleness. Courtesy and
sweet affability can be no more severed from him than life from his
soul; not out of a base and servile popularity, and desire of ambitious
insinuation, but of a native gentleness of disposition, and true value
of himself. His hand is open and bounteous, yet not so as that he should
rather respect his glory than his estate; wherein his wisdom can
distinguish betwixt parasites and friends, betwixt changing of favours
and expending them.
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