Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/125

Rh notable advertisements for to attain thereto, which be as it were preservatives: by means whereof we should not feel ourselves attaint any more with this malady.]

. It seemeth unto me (O Fundanus) that painters do very well and wisely to view and consider their works often and by times between, before they think them finished and let them go out of their hands: for that by setting them so out of their sight, and then afterwards having recourse thither again to judge thereof, they make their eyes (as it were) new judges, to spy and discern the least fault that is, which continual looking thereupon, and the ordinary view of one and the same thing doth cover and hide from them. But forasmuch as it is not possible that a man should depart from himself for a time, and after a certain space return again; nor that he should break, interrupt and discontinue his understanding and sense within (which is the cause that each man is a worse judge of himself than of others). A second means and remedy therefore in this case would be used: namely, to review his friends sundry times, and eftsoons likewise to yield himself to be seen and beheld by them; not so much to know thereby whether he aged apace and grow soon old; or whether the constitution of his body be better or worse than it was before, as to survey and consider his manners and behaviour, to wit, whether time hath added any good thing, or taken away ought that is bad and naught. For mine own part, this being now the second year since I came first to this city of Rome, and the fifth month of mine acquaintance with you, I think it no great wonder, that considering your towardness and the dexterity of your nature, those good parts which were already in you, have gotten so great an addition and be so much increased, as they are: but when I see how that vehement inclination and ardent motion of yours to anger, thereunto by nature you were given, is by the guidance of reason become so mild, so gentle and tractable, it cometh into my mind to say thereunto that which I read in Homer:

O what a wondrous change is here? Much milder are you than you were.

And verily this gentleness and meekness of yours is not turned into a certain sloth, and general dissolution of your vigour: but like as a piece of ground well tilled, lieth light and even, and besides more hollow than before, which maketh much for the fertility thereof; even so, your nature hath gotten instead of that violent disposition and sudden propension unto choler, a