Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/296

274 he never rests until he light upon some old ragged rhapsodies and overworn discourses, which he hath patched and tacked together a thousand times. Such a one there was among us, who happened by chance to have perused two or three books of Ephorus; whereby he took himself to be so great a clerk and so well read, that he wearied every man's ears who heard him talk; there was no assembly nor feast unto which he came, but he would force the company to arise and depart with his unmeasurable prating of the battle of Leuctres, and the occurrents that ensued thereupon, insomuch as he got himself a by-name, and every man called him Epaminondas. But this is the least inconvenience of all others that followeth this infirmity of much babbling: and surely one good means it is to the cure thereof; To turn the same from other matters to such as these: for thereby shall their tongue be less troublesome and offensive when it passeth the bonds in the terms only of literature.

Over and besides, for the remedy of this their disease, they shall do well to inure and accustom themselves to write somewhat, and to dispute of questions apart. Thus did Antipater the Stoic, who as it may be thought, being not able nor willing to hold out in disputation hand to hand with Carneades, who with a violent stream (as it were) of his forcible wit and eloquence refuted the sect of the Stoics, answered the said Carneades by writing, and filled whole books with contradictory assertions and arguments against him; insomuch as thereupon he was surnamed Calamoboas, which is as much to say, as the lusty crier with his pen: and so by all likelihood this manner of fighting with a shadow and loud exclaiming in secret, and apart by themselves, training these stout praters every day by little and little from the frequency and multitude of people, may make them in the end more sociable and fitter for company. Thus curst curs, after they have spent and discharged their choler and anger upon the cudgels or stones which have been thrown at them, become thereby more gentle and tractable to men. But above all, it were very expedient and profitable for them to be always near unto personages for years elder, and in authority greater than themselves, and with those to converse; for the reverent regard and fear that they have in respect of their dignity and gravity, may induce and direct them in time and by custom to keep silence; and evermore among those exercises heretofore by us specified, this advisement would be mingled and interlaced; That when we are about to speak, and that words be ready to run out of our mouth, we say thus unto