Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/67

Rh this love or hatred of his to a thing, not as if he had received these impressions from some sudden passion, but upon a staid and settled judgment.

Which being so: how and by what different marks shall he be known and convinced that he is not the like or the same in deed, but only a counterfeit of the like and of the same? First, a man must consider well whether there be an uniform equality in all his intentions and actions or no? whether he continue and persist still, taking pleasure in the same things, and praising the same at all times? whether he compose and direct his life according to one and the same mould and pattern? like as it becometh a man who is an ingenuous lover of that friendship and conversation which is ever after one manner, and always like itself: for such a one indeed is a true friend. But a flatterer contrariwise is one who hath no one permanent seat in his manners and behaviour, nor hath made choice of any life for his own content, but only to please another, as framing and applying his actions wholly to the humour of another, is never simple, uniform, nor like himself, but variable and changing always from one form to another, much like as water which is poured out of one vessel into another, even as it runneth forth, taketh the form and fashion of that vessel which receiveth it. And herein he is clean contrary to the ape; for the ape as it should seem, thinking to counterfeit a man, by turning, hopping, and dancing as he doth, is quickly caught: but the flatterer, whiles he doth imitate and counterfeit others, doth entice and draw them, as it were, with a pipe or call, into his net, and so beguileth them. And this he doeth not always after one manner; for with one he danceth and singeth; with another he will seem to wrestle, or otherwise to exercise the body in feats of activity: if he chance to meet with a man that loveth to hunt, and to keep hounds, him he will follow hard at heels, setting out a throat as loud in a manner as Hippolytus in the tragedy Phædra, crying,

So ho, this is my joy and only good, With cry to lure, with tooting horn to wind. By leave of gods to bring into the wood My hounds, to rouse and chase the dapple hind. And yet hath he nothing to do at all with the wild beasts of the forest, but it is the hunter himself whom he layeth for to take within his net and toil. And say that he light upon a young man that is a student and given to learning, then you shall see him also as deep poring upon his book, and always in his study;