Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/32

 24 DEMOSTHENES. their compensation in public blessings, he should main- tain the dignity of his character and station, much more than actors who rej)resent the persons of kings and tyrants, who, we see, when they either laugh or weep on the stage, follow, not their own private inchnations, but the course consistent with the subject and with their position. And if, moreover, when our neighbor is in misfortune, it is not our duty to forbear offering any consolation, but rather to say whatever may tend to cheer him, and to invite his attention to any agreeable . objects, just as we tell people who are troubled with sore eyes, to withdraw their sight from bright and offensive colors to green, and those of a softer mixture, from whence can a man seek, in his own case, better argu- ments of consolation for afflictions in his family, than from the prosj^erity of his country, by making public and domestic chances count, so to say, together, and the better fortune of the state obscure and conceal the less happy cu'cumstances of the individual. I have been in- duced to say so much, because I have known many read- ers melted by JEschines's language into a soft and mx- manly tenderness. But now to return to my narrative. The cities of Greece were inspirited once more by the efforts of De- mosthenes to form a league together. The Thebans, whom he had provided with arms, set upon their gar- rison, and slew many of them; the Athenians made preparations to join their forces with them ; Demosthe- nes ruled supreme in the popular assembly, and wrote letters to the Persian officers who commanded under the king in Asia, inciting them to make war upon the Mace- donian, calling him child and simpleton.* But as soon acter held up to ridicule in an old never attained the sense or wits of poem ascribed to Homer, — the boy, a man.
 * Margites, the name of the char- who, though fully grown up, has