His education for some years had
been in Ireland, where his father was Lord Deputy; so that, when he
returned into England to the possession of his fortune, he was
unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow up by
the custom of conversation; and therefore was to make a pure election
of his company, which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to
the young nobility of that time. And it cannot be denied, though he
admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their
natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and
friendship for the most part was with men of the most eminent and
sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity; and
such had a title to his bosom.

He was a great cherisher of wit and fancy and good parts in any man,
and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and
bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in
those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been
trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice
in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was
constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to
be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And
therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above
all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to
his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable
{32} industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was
master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians.

In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of
Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite
and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of
wit and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound
in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was
not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had
known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in
a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university
in less volume; whither they came not so much for repose as study, and
to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and
consent made current in vulgar conversation. . .

From the entrance into this unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and