parts. Who more acceptable, sometimes, to the most honourable
persons? who more a favourite to the most infamous? who, sometimes,
appeared a braver champion? who, at other times, a bolder enemy to
his country? who more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient
in his toils? who more rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in
giving? Above all things, this was remarkable and admirable in him.
The arts he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness of all
sorts of men, to retain it with great complaisance, to communicate
all things to them, to watch and serve all the occasions of their
fortune, both with his money and his interest, and his industry, and
if need were, not by sticking at any wickedness whatsoever that
might be useful to them, to bend and turn about his own nature and
laveer with every wind, to live severely with the melancholy,
merrily with the pleasant, gravely with the aged, wantonly with the
young, desperately with the bold, and debauchedly with the
luxurious. With this variety and multiplicity of his nature, as he
had made a collection of friendships with all the most wicked and
reckless of all nations, so, by the artificial simulation of some
virtues, he made a shift to ensnare some honest and eminent persons
into his familiarity; neither could so vast a design as the
destruction of this empire have been undertaken by him, if the
immanity of so many vices had not been covered and disguised by the
appearances of some excellent qualities."

I see, methinks, the character of an Anti-Paul, who became all
things to all men, that he might destroy all; who only wanted the
assistance of fortune to have been as great as his friend Caesar
was, a little after him. And the ways of Caesar to compass the same
ends--I mean till the civil war, which was but another manner of
setting his country on fire--were not unlike these, though he used