ghts in their company and conversation that he
appears to make this his chief pleasure in life. He loathes ball-games,
cards and gambling, and the other games with which the ordinary run of
men of rank are used to kill time. Furthermore, while he is somewhat
careless of his own affairs, there is none more diligent in looking
after his friends' affairs. Need I continue? Should anyone want a
finished example of true friendship he could not do better than seek it
in More.

In social intercourse he is of so rare a courtesy and charm of manners
that there is no man so melancholy that he does not gladden, no subject
so forbidding that he does not dispel the tedium of it. From his boyhood
he has loved joking, so that he might seem born for this, but in his
jokes he has never descended to buffoonery, and has never loved the
biting jest. As a youth he both composed and acted in little comedies.
Any witty remark he would still enjoy, even were it directed against
himself, such is his delight in clever sallies of ingenious flavour. As
a result he wrote epigrams as a young man, and delighted particularly in
Lucian; indeed he was responsible for my writing the _Praise of Folly_,
that is for making the camel dance.

In human relations he looks for pleasure in everything he comes across,
even in the gravest matters. If he has to do with intelligent and
educated men, he takes pleasure in their brilliance; if with the
ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their folly. He is not put out by
perfect fools, and suits himself with marvellous dexterity to all men's
feelings. For women generally, even for his wife, he has nothing but
jests and merriment. You could say he was a second Democritus, or
better, that Pythagorean philosopher who saunters through the
market-place with a tranquil mind gazing on the uproar of buyers and
sellers. None is less guided by the opinion of the herd, but again none
is less remote from the common feelings of humanity.

He takes an especial pleasure in watching the appearance, characters and
behaviour of various creatures; accordingly there is almost no kind of
bird which he does not keep at his home, and various other animals not
commonly found, such as apes, foxes, ferrets, weasels and their like.
Added to this, he eagerly buys anything foreign or otherwise worth
looking at which comes his way, and he has the whole house stocked with
these objects, so that wherever the visitor looks there is something to
detain hi