Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/198

176 himself, and no man is the same to-day that he was yesterday: but these for fault of memory not able to retain and keep those things that are done and past, no, nor to apprehend and eftsoons call them again to mind, but suffer everything to pass away and run as it were through a sieve, do not in word but in deed and effect make themselves void and empty every day more than other, depending only upon the morrow, as if those things which were done the year past, of late, and yesterday, nothing appertained unto them, nor ever were at all.

This is, therefore, one thing that hindereth and troubleth that equanimity and repose of spirit which we seek for: and yet there is another that doth it more; and that is this; Like as flies creeping upon the smooth places of glasses or mirrors, cannot hold their feet but must needs fall down, but contrariwise they take hold where they meet with any roughness, and stick fast to rugged flaws that they can find; even so these men, gliding and glancing over all delectable and pleasant occurrences, take hold of any adverse and heavy calamities, those they cleave unto and remember very well; or rather as (by report) there is about the city Olynthus a certain place, into which if any flies called beetles enter in once, they cannot get forth again, but after they have kept a-tuming about, and fetching compasses round to no purpose a long time, they die in the end, whereupon it took the name of Canfharolethron; semblably, men after they fall to the reckoning up and commemoration of their harms and calamities past, are not willing to retire back, nor to breathe themselves and give over multiplying thereupon still. And yet contrariwise, they ought to do after the manner of painters, who when they paint a table do lay upon the ground, or by a course of dead and duskish colours, such as be fresh, gay and gallant, for to palliate and in some sort to hide the unpleasantness of the other, they ought (I say) to smother and keep down the heaviness of the heart occasioned by some cross mishaps, with those that have fallen out of their mind, for to obliterate and wipe them out of their mind quite, and to be freed clean from them it is not possible: and surely the harmony of this world is reciprocal and variable, compounded (as it were) of contraries, like as we do see in an harp or bow; neither is any earthly thing under the cope of heaven pure, simple and sincere without mixture. But as music doth consist of base and treble sounds; and grammar of letters, which be partly vocal and partly mute, to wit, vowels and consonants, and he is not to be counted a grammarian and musician who is offended and