Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/154

 show him the way and as it were the foundations upon which he must build,— than if he were to follow generalities only. 7.— "Last evening the Count spoke about Courtiership so fully and so beautifully, that he has aroused in me no little fear and doubt whether I shall be able to satisfy this noble company so well in what I have to say, as he did in what it fell to him to say. Yet to make myself a sharer in his fame as far as I can, and to be sure of avoiding this one mistake at least, I shall contradict him in nothing.

"Accepting his opinions then, and among others his opinion as to the Courtier's noble birth capacities, bodily form and grace of feature,— I say that to win praise justly and good opinion from everyone and favour from the princes whom he serves, I deem it necessary for the Courtier to know how to dispose his whole life, and to make the most of his good qualities in intercourse with all men everywhere, without exciting envy thereby. And how difficult this in itself is, we may infer from the fewness of those who are seen to reach the goal; for by nature we all are more ready to censure mistakes than to praise things well done, and many men, from a kind of innate malignity and although they clearly see the good, seem to strive with every effort and pains to find either some hidden fault in us or at least some semblance of fault.

"Thus it is needful for our Courtier to be cautious in his every action, and always to mingle good sense with what he says or does. And let him not only take care that his separate parts and qualities are excellent, but let him order the tenour of his life in such fashion, that the whole may be in keeping with these parts and be seen to be always and in everything accordant with his own self and form one single body of all these good qualities; so that his every act may be the result and compound of all his faculties, as the Stoics say is the duty of him who is wise.

"Still, although in every action one faculty is always chief, yet all are so enlinked together, that they make for one end and may all further and serve every purpose. Hence he must know how to make the most of them, and by means of contrast and as it were foil to the one, he must make the other more clearly