Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/71

Rh draw to the life, the beauty and favour of a good face, will be sure yet to express the rivels, warts, moles, freckles, scars and such-like deformities. For even so a flatterer can imitate very passing well, incontinency, foolish superstition, hastiness and choler, bitterness towards household servants, distrust and diffidence in friends and kinsfolk, yea, and treachery against them: for that by nature he is always inclined to the worse; and besides, so far he would be thought from blaming vice, that he undertaketh to imitate the same. For those that seek for amendment of life and reformation of manners are ever suspected: such (I say) as shew themselves displeased and offended at the faults and misdemeanours of their friends. And this was it that made Dion odious to Denys the Tyrant, Samius to Philip, and Cleomenes to Ptolemaeus, and in the end was their ruin and overthrow.

The flatterer who desireth to be both pleasant and faithful at once, or at leastwise so to be reputed, for excessive love and friendship that he pretendeth, will not seem to be offended with his friend for any lewd parts, but in all things would be thought to carry the same affection, and to be in manner of the same nature and incorporate into him: whereupon it cometh to pass also that even in casual things and the occurrences of this life, which happen without our will and counsel, he will needs have a part, there is no remedy. This, if he be disposed to flatter sick persons, he will make as though he were sick also of the same disease for company: and if he have to do with such as be dim-sighted or hard of hearing, he will be thought neither to see nor hear well for fellowship. Thus the flatterers about Denys the Tyrant, when he had an impediment in his eyes that he could not see clearly, feigned that themselves likewise were half blind, and to make it good, hit one upon another at the board, and overthrew the dishes upon the table as they sate at supper.

Others there be that proceed farther than so, and because they would appear more touched with a fellow-feeling of affections, will enter as far as to the very inward secrets that are not to be revealed. For if they can perceive that they whom they do flatter be not fortunate in their marriage, or that they are grown into distrust, jealousy, and sinister opinion, either of their own children or their near kinsfolk and familiars; they spare not themselves but begin to complain, and that with grief of heart and sorrow of their own wives and children, of their kindred and friends, laying abroad some criminous matters, which were better (iwis) to be concealed and smothered, than