Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/129

Rh presenting near unto it some object of fear: nay (I assure you) by a sudden joy coming upon it unlooked for, in many a man, according as Homer saith, choler hath melted, dissolved and evaporated away. And therefore this resolution I made, that anger was a passion not incurable, if men were willing to be cured: for surely the occasions and beginnings thereof are not always great and forcible; but we see that a jest, a scoff, some sport, some laughter, a wink of the eye, or nod of the head, and such small matters, hath set many in a pelting chafe: even as Lady Helena saying no more but thus unto her niece or brother's daughter at their first meeting,

drave her in such a fit of choler, that therewith she was provoked to break off her speech with this answer:

Likewise Callisthenes mightily offended Alexander with one word, who when a great bowl of wine went round about the table, refused it as it came to his turn, saying: I will not (I trow) drink so to your health, Alexander, that I shall have need thereby of Æsculapius (i.e., a physician). A fire that newly hath caught aflame with hares' or conies' hair, dry leaves, hurds and light straw, stubble and rakings, it is an easy matter to put out and quench; but if it have once taken to sound fuel and such matter as hath solidity, substance and thickness in it, soon it burnetii and consumeth, as Æschylus saith:

Semblably, he that will take heed unto choler at the beginning, when he seeth it once to smoke or flame out by occasion of some merry speech, flouting scoffs, and foolish words of no moment, needs not to strive much about the quenching of it: for many times if he do no more but hold his peace, or make small account or none at all of such matters, it is enough to extinguish and make it go out. For he that ministreth not fuel to fire, putteth it out; and whosoever feedeth not his anger at the first, and bloweth not the coals himself, doth cool and repress the same. And therefore Hieronymus the philosopher, although otherwise he have taught us many good lessons and instructions, yet in