Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/161

Rh ful or temporary. A great deal of his counsel to his friend exhibits him in the light of a politic watcher of events, at one time deprecating what at another he advocated. Who would recognise the champion of the "wise and good" and of their policy, pure and simple, in these verses, breathing a spirit of progress and expediency?—

There is also an inconsistency to be accounted for doubtless upon politic grounds, in the discrepant advice which he gives Cyrnus as to the friend to be chosen in the crisis then imminent. At one time he is all for "determined hearty partisans," and deprecates association with reckless associates, as well as with fair-weather friends:—

But anon he is found subscribing to the principle that "no man is wholly bad or wholly good," and recommending his friend to conciliate, as we say, Tom, Dick, and Harry, so as to be "all things to all men."