Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/356

334 hit thee home, and requite thee again with this verse out of the tragical poet:

If thou chance to upbraid thine enemy with ignorance, and call him unlearned, take thou greater pains at thy book, love thou thy study better, and get more learning: if thou twit him with cowardice, and name him dastard, stir up the vigour of thine own courage the rather, and shew thyself a man so much the more; hast thou given him the terms of beastly whoremaster or lascivious lecher, wipe out of thy heart the least taint and spot that remaineth hidden therein of concupiscence and sensuality; for nothing is there more shameful or causeth greater grief of heart, than an opprobrious and reproachful speech returned justly upon the author thereof. And as it seemeth that the reverberation of a light doth more offence unto the feeble eyes, even so those reproaches which are retorted and sent back again by the truth, upon a man that blazed them before, are more offensive: for no less than the north-east wind Cæcias doth gather unto it clouds, so doth a bad life draw unto it opprobrious speeches; which Plato knowing well enough, whensoever he was present in place, and saw other men do any unseemly or dishonest thing, was wont to retire apart, and say thus secretly unto himself: Do not I also labour otherwhile of this disease? Moreover, he that hath blamed and reproached the life of another, if presently withal he would go and examine his own, reforming the same accordingly, redressing and amending all that he finds amiss, until he have brought it to a better state, shall receive some profit by that reproving and reviling of his; otherwise it may both seem (as it is no less indeed) a vain and unprofitable thing.

Commonly men cannot choose but laugh when they see either a bald-pate or a hunch-back to taunt and scoff at others for the same defects or deformities; and so in truth, it were a ridiculous thing and a mere mockery, to blame or reproach another in that for which he may be mocked and reproached himself. Thus Leo the Byzantine cut one home that was crumped-shouldered and hunched-backed, when he seemed to hit him in the teeth with his dim and feeble eyesight: Dost thou twit me (quoth he) by any imperfection of nature incident unto a man, whenas thyself art marked from heaven, and earnest the divine vengeance upon thy back? Never then reprove thou an adulterer, if thyself be an unclean wanton with boys; nor seem thou to upbraid one