Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/86

64 forbear to speak plainly the truth; who with his goodwill would never speak or do anything to soothe up and please another: Then will he make semblance as though he neither saw nor took knowledge of any great and gross sins indeed: but if peradventure there be some light and small outward faults, he will make foul ado thereat, he will keep a wondering and crying out upon them: then shall you have him in good earnest exclaim and reprove the delinquent with a loud and sounding voice: As, for example, if he chance to espy the implements or anything else about the house lie out of order; if a man be not well and neatly lodged; if his beard be not of the right cut, or his hair grow out of fashion; if a garment sit not handsomely about him, or if a horse or hound be not so carefully tended as they should be. But say that a man set nought by his parents, neglect his own children, misuse his wife, disdain and despise his kindred, spend and consume his goods; none of all these enormities touch and move him: Here he is mute and hath not a word to say; he dares not reprove these abuses: much like as if a master of the wrestling school, who suffereth a wrestler that is under his hand to be a drunkard and a whoremonger, should chide and rebuke him sharply about an oil cruse or curry-comb; or as if a grammarian should find fault with his scholar and chide him for his writing-tables or his pen, letting him go away clear with solecisms, incongruities and barbarisms, as if he heard them not.

Also I can liken a flatterer to him who will not blame an ill author, or ridiculous rhetorician in anything as touching his oration itself; but rather reproveth him for his utterance, and sharply taketh him up for that by drinking of cold water he hath hurt his wind-pipe, and so marred his voice; or to one who being bidden to read over and peruse a poor seely epigram or other writing that is nothing worth, taketh on and fareth against the paper wherein it is written, for being thick, coarse or rugged; or against the writer, for negligent, slovenly or impure otherwise. Thus the claw-backs and flatterers about King Ptolemaeus, who would seem to love good letters, and to be desirous of learning, used ordinarily to draw out their disputations and conferences at length, even to midnight, debating about some gloss or signification of a word, about a verse, or touching some history: but all the while there was not one among so many of them that would tell him of his cruelty, of his wrongs and oppressions, nor yet of his drumming, tabouring,