Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/99

Rh gift; to make the shot, and clear the reckoning of any sumptuous feast or banquet he is ready and perfect; in providing for a great dinner or supper, and setting the same forth accordingly, he is nothing slow, but nimble enough. To give entertainment unto concubines he is very handsome, obsequious and serviceable; if one bid him to speak audaciously and malapertly against a father-in-law, a guardian, tutor, or any such, or to put away his true espoused wife, like as he seeth his good master do before him, he is without all shame and mercy: so that even herein also it is no hard matter to see what kind of man he is, and how much he differeth from a true friend: For command him to commit what villany and wickedness you will, ready he is to execute the same, and so he may gratify and pleasure you that set him on work, he careth not to do any injury to himself.

There is, moreover, another means not of the least consequence, whereby a man may know how much a flatterer differeth from a friend indeed, namely, by his disposition and behaviour towards his other friends: for a true friend findeth contentment in nothing so much as to love many, and likewise to be loved of many; and herein he laboureth especially with his friend to procure himself many others to love and honour him: for being of this opinion, that among good friends all things are common, he thinketh that nothing ought to be more common than friends themselves. But the supposed, false, and counterfeit friend, being privy to his own conscience, that he doth great injury to true amity and friendship, which he doth corrupt in manner of a base piece of money: as he is by nature envious, so he exerciseth that envy of his upon such as be like himself, striving with a kind of emulation to surpass them in scurrile speech, giving of taunts and garrulity, but before such as he knoweth better than himself, he trembleth and is afraid, and in truth dare not come near nor shew his face to such an one, no more (I assure you) than a footman to go and keep pace (according to the proverb) with a Lydian chariot, or rather, as Simonides saith,

Being compared with true, sound, and grave friendship, which (as they say) will endure the hammer, he cannot choose but find himself to be but light, falsified, and deceitful: seeing then that he must needs be detected and known for such an one as he is, what doth he, think you? Surely he playeth like an unskilful painter, who had painted certain cocks, but very