Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/113

Rh warily and give no such offence, if for no other thing else; yet because his enemies should not take vantage, and bear themselves insolently against him: For how shall they be able to open their mouths against you, and what misword can they have to say unto you, if you would leave these things and cast them behind you, for which you hear ill and are grown to some obloquy? In this sort if the matter be handled, all the offence that was taken shall light upon the head of the first slanderer, and the profit shall be attributed unto the other that gave the friendly advertisement, and he shall go away with all the thanks.

Some there be, moreover, who after a more cleanly and fine manner in speaking of others, admonish their own familiar friends: for they will accuse strangers in their hearing for those faults which they know them to commit, and by this means reclaim them from the same. Thus Ammonius, our master, perceiving when he gave lecture in the afternoon that some of us his scholars had taken a larger dinner, and eaten more than was meet for students, commanded a servant of his affranchised to take up his own son and to beat him, and why so? He cannot forsooth make his dinner (quoth he) but he must have some vinegar to his meat. And in saying so, he cast his eye upon us, in such sort that as many as were culpable took themselves to be rebuked, and thought that he meant them.

Furthermore, this good regard would be observed, that we never use this fashion of free speech, and reproving our friend in the presence of many persons, but we must remember that which befel unto Plato: for when upon a time Socrates in a disputation held at the table inveighed somewhat too bitterly against one of his familiars before them all: Had it not been better (quoth Plato) to have told him of this privately, but thus to shame him before all this company? But Socrates taking him presently therewith, And you also might have done better to have said this to myself, when you had found me alone. Pythagoras by report gave such hard terms by way of reproof to one of his scholars and acquaintance, in the hearing of many, that the young man for very grief of heart was weary of his life and hanged himself. But never would Pythagoras after to his dying day reprove or admonish any man, if another were in place.

And to say a truth, as well the detection as the correction of a sin ought to be secret, and not in public place, like as the discovery and cure also of some filthy and foul disease: it must