Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/145

Rh to anger, not only against our wives, or servitors and friends, as being contemned by them; but also many times in our choler we fall upon inn-keepers, mariners and muleteers, when they be drunk, supposing that they despise us. And that which more is, we are offended with dogs when they bay or bark at us; and with asses if they chance to fling out and kick us. Like unto him who lifted up his hand to strike and beat him that did drive an ass; and when the man cried that he was an Athenian: But thou, I am sure, art no Athenian (quoth he) to the ass, and laid upon the poor beast as hard as he could, and gave him many a blow with his cudgel. But that which chiefly causeth us to be angry, and breedeth a continual disposition thereto in our minds, causing us so often to break out into fits of choler, which by little and little was engendered and gathered there before, is the love of our own selves, and a kind of froward surliness hardly to be pleased, together with a certain daintiness and delicacy, which all concurring in one, breed and bring forth a swarm (as it were) of bees, or rather a wasps' nest in us. And therefore there cannot be a better means for to carry ourselves mildly and kindly, towards our wives, our servants, familiars and friends, than a contented mind, and a singleness or simplicity of heart, when a man resteth satisfied with whatsoever is present at hand, and requireth neither things superfluous nor exquisite:

But he that never is content With rost or sod, but cook is shent: However he be serv'd, I mean With more, with less, or in a mean: He is not pleas'd, nor one good word Can give of viands set on board. Without some snow who drinks no draught, Nor eateth bread in market bought. Who tastes no meat, b' it never so good, Serv'd up in dish of earth or wood: And thinks no bed nor pillow soft, Unless with down like sea aloft Stirr'd from beneath, it strut and swell; For otherwise he sleeps not well;

who with rods and whips plieth and hasteneth the servitors at the table, making them to run until they sweat again, crying and bawling at them to come away apace, as if they were not carrying dishes of meat, but plasters and cataplasms for some inflammation or painful impostume: subjecting himself after a slavish manner to a servile kind of diet and life, full of discontentment, quarrels and complaints: little knoweth such an one how by a continual cough, or many concussions and distemperatures, he hath brought his soul to an ulcerous and rheumatic