Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/82

60 But this kind of dissimuled praises, requiring greater and more wary circumspection to be taken heed of, if a man would detect and convince, he ought of purpose, when he is tempted and assailed with such flattery, to obtrude and propose unto the flatterer absurd counsel, if he seem to demand and ask it: advertisements also and precepts of the same kind, yea, and corrections without all sense and to no purpose, when he shall offer his labours to be read and perused: In so doing, if he perceive the party suspected to be a flatterer, doth not gainsay nor contradict anything, but alloweth of all and receiveth the same, yea, and more than that, when he shall to every point cry out and say, Oh, well said and sufficiently: excellent wit: be sure then he is caught in a trap: then I say it will be found plainly according to the common byword.

that is to say, he waited for some occasion and opportunity by praising to puff him up with vanity and overweaning of himself. Moreover, like as some have defined painting to be a mute poesy; even so praising is a kind of silent and secret flattery. Hunters (we see), then, soonest deceive the poor beasts, when they seem to do nothing less than to hunt, making semblance as though they either travelled like wayfaring men, or tended their flocks, or else tilled the ground. Semblably flatterers touch those whom they flatter nearest and enter to the very quick by praising, when they make no shew thereof, but seem to do nothing less than praise. For he that giveth the chair and seat to another coming in place, or as he is making an oration either in public place before the people or in council house to the senate, breaketh off his own speech, and yieldeth unto him his room, giving him leave to speak or to opine, and remaineth silent himself: by this his silence sheweth that he doth repute the other a better man and of more sufficiency for wisdom and knowledge than himself, much more than if he should pronounce and ring it out aloud to the whole audience.

And hereupon it is that this sort of people who make profession of flattery, take up ordinarily the first and highest seats, as well at sermons and public orations whither men flock to hear, as at the theatres and shew places, not that they think themselves worthy of such places, but because they may rise and make room for better and richer persons as they come, and thereby