Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/121

Rh of liberty to make their answer and clear themselves: but rather to help them out, and after a sort to minister unto them some honest and colourable pretences, to excuse and justify their facts: and when a man seeth them do amiss by reason of some worse cause indeed, to lay the fault upon another occasion that is more tolerable. As Hector when he said unto Paris:

As if his brother's retire out of battle and refusal to combat with Menelaus, had not been a mere flight and running away, but very anger and a curst stomach. Likewise Nestor unto Agamemnon:

For in mine advice a more mild reprehension is this than to have said: This was injuriously done of you, or this was a shameful and villanous part of yours; As also to say unto one, You could not tell what you did; you thought not of it; or you were altogether ignorant what would come thereof, is better and more civil than bluntly to charge him and say: This was a mere wrong, and a wicked act of yours. Also thus, Do not contest and quarrel in this wise with your brother, is less offensive than to say: Deal not thus enviously and spitefully against your brother: Likewise it were a more gentle manner of reproof to say unto a man: Avoid this woman that spoileth and abuseth you; than thus: Give over this woman, spoil and abuse her no more. Thus you see what means are to be used in this liberty of speech, when a friend would cure a malady.

But for to prevent the same, there would be practised a clean contrary course: for when it behoveth to avert and turn our friends from committing a fault, whereto they are prone and inclined; or to withstand some violent and disordinate passion, which carrieth them a clean contrary way; or when we are desirous to incite and stir them forward unto good things, being of themselves slow and backward: when, I say, we would give an edge unto them, who are otherwise dull, and heat them being cold, we ought to transfer the thing or act in hand to some absurd causes, and those that be unseemly and undecent. Thus Ulysses pricked on Achilles in a certain tragedy of