Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/218

196 Euripides, who sat at the board; and withal, casting his eye wistly upon the party who craved it: As for you, sir (quoth he), worthy you are for your asking to go without; but Euripides deserveth to have, though he do not crave. A worthy speech, importing thus much, that the judgment of reason ought to be the best master and guide to direct us in our gifts and free liberality, and not bashfulness and shame to deny.

But we, contrariwise, neglecting and despising many times those that be honest and modest persons, yea, our very familiar friends, who have need of our help, and seem to request the same, are ready to bestow our bounty upon such as incessantly importune us with their impudent craving, not for any affection that we have to pleasure them, but because we cannot find in our heart to say them nay. Thus did King Antigonus the elder to Bias, after he had been a long time an importunate beggar: Give this Bias (quoth he) a talent, for methinks he will have it perforce: and yet this Antigonus, of all princes and kings that ever were, had the best grace and most dexterity to put by and shift off such unreasonable beggars: for when a beggarly cynical philosopher craved once at his hands a drachm: It is not for a king (quoth he) to give a drachm: Why then (quoth the other again) give me a talent: Neither is it meet (quoth the king) for a cynic to receive a talent. Diogenes, as he walked otherwhiles along the Ceramicum (that is, a street in Athens, where stood erected the statues of worthy personages), would ask alms of those images; and when some marvelled at him therefore: I do it (quoth he) to learn how to take a repulse and denial. Semblably, we ought first to be trained in small matters, and to exercise ourselves in denying slight requests unto such as would seem to demand and have at our hands that which is not fit and requisite, to the end that we may not be to seek for an answer when we would deny them in matters of greater importance: for as Demosthenes was wont to say: He who hath spent and bestowed that which he had otherwise than he should, will never employ those things which he hath, not as he ought, if peradventure he should be furnished again therewith. And look how often we do fail, and be wanting in honest things, and yet abound in superfluities, it is a sign that we are in a great fault, and many ways shame groweth to us by that means.

Moreover, so it is, that this excessive bashfulness is not only a bad and undiscreet steward to lay out and to disperse our money, but also to dispose of our serious affairs and those of great consequence, wherein it will not admit the advice and