Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/108

86 danger; for that our minds and spirits, kindled once with wine, are easy enflamed with choler; yea, and oftentimes it falleth out, that a man after he hath taken his drink well, when he thinketh but to use his freedom of tongue for to give some wholesome advertisement and admonition, ministreth occasion of great enmity. And to say all in few words, it is not the part of a generous, confident, and resolute heart, but rather of a craven kind and unmanly, to forbear plain speech when men are sober, and to keep a-barking at the board, like unto those cowardly cur dogs who never snarl but about a bone under the table. And now of this point, needless it is to discourse any longer.

But forasmuch as many men neither will nor dare control and reform their friends when they do amiss, so long as they be in prosperity; as being of opinion that such admonition cannot have access nor reach into a fortunate state that standeth upright; and yet the same persons when men are falling, are ready to lay them along, and being once down, to make a football of them, or tread them under feet, or else keep them so when they be once under the hatches, giving their liberty of speech full scope to run over them all at once; as a breakwater which having been kept up perforce against the nature and course thereof, is now let go, and the flood-gates drawn up; rejoicing at his change and infortunity of theirs, in regard as well of their pride and arrogancy, who before disdained and despised them; as also of themselves, who are but in mean and low estate: it were not impertinent to this place for to discourse a little of this matter, and to answer that verse of Euripides:

When fortune doth upon men smile, What need have they of friends the while?

Namely, that even then when as they seem to have fortune at command, they stand in most necessity, and ought to have their friends about them, to pluck down their plumes and bring under their haughtiness of heart, occasioned by prosperity: for few there be who with their outward felicity continue wise and sober in mind, breaking not forth into insolence; yea, and many there are who have need of wit, discretion and reason to be put into them from without, to abate and depress them being set agog and puffed up with the favours of fortune: But say that the divine power do change and turn about, and overthrow their state, or clip their wings and diminish their greatness and authority, then these calamities of themselves are scourges