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LI.

Optanda.-Thersites Homeri.-Whom the disease of talking still once possesseth, he can never hold his peace. Nay, rather than he will not discourse he will hire men to hear him. And so heard, not hearkened unto, he comes off most times like a mountebank, that when he hath praised his medicines, finds none will take them, or trust him. He is like Homer's Thersites.

̓Αμετροεπῆς, ἀκριτόμυθος; speaking without judgment

or measure.

Loquax magis, quàm facundus,

Satis loquentiæ, sapientiæ parum.

Γλώσσης τοι θησαυρὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν ἄριστος
Φειδωλῆς, πλείστη δὲ χάρις κατὰ μέτρον ιούσης.

Optimus est homini linguæ thesaurus, et ingens
Gratia, quæ parcis mensurat singula verbis.

LII.

Homeri Ulysses.-Demacatus Plutarchi.-Ulysses in Homer, is made a long-thinking man, before he speaks; and Epaminondas is celebrated by Pindar, to be a man, that though he knew much, yet he spoke but little. Demacatus, when on the bench he was long silent, and said nothing; one asking him, if it were folly in him, or want of language? he answered, A fool could never hold his peace. For too much talking is ever the indice of a fool.

Dum tacet indoctus, poterit cordatus haberi;
Is morbos animi namque tacendo tegit."

Nor is that worthy speech of Zeno the philosopher to be past over, with the note of ignorance; who being invited to a feast in Athens, where a great

e Salust.

* Vid. Zeuxidis pict. Serm. ad Megabizum.

f Hesiodus.

h Plutarch.

prince's ambassadors were entertained, and was the only person that said nothing at the table; one of them with courtesy asked him, What shall we return from thee, Zeno, to the prince our master, if he asks us of thee? Nothing, he replied, more, but that you found an old man in Athens, that knew to be silent amongst his cups. It was near a miracle to see an old man silent, since talking is the disease of age; but amongst cups makes it fully a wonder.

LIII.

Argute dictum.-It was wittily said upon one that was taken for a great and grave man, so long as he held his peace: This man might have been a counsellor of state, till he spoke but having spoken, not the beadle of the ward. 'Exeμulía Pythag. quàm laudabilis! γλώσσης προτῶν ἄλλων κράτει θεοῖς ἐπόμενος. Linguam cohibe, præ aliis omnibus, ad Deorum exemplum. Digito compesce labellum.*

LIV.

Acutius cernuntur vitia quam virtutes.-There is almost no man but he sees clearlier and sharper the vices in a speaker, than the virtues. And there are many, that with more ease will find fault with what is spoken foolishly, than that can give allowance to that wherein you are wise silently. The treasure of a fool is always in his tongue, said the witty comic poet;' and it appears not in any thing more than in that nation, whereof one, when he had got the inheritance of an unlucky old grange, would needs sell it; and to draw buyers, proclaimed the virtues of it. Nothing ever thrived on it, saith he. No owner of it ever died in his bed; some hung, some drowned themselves; some were banished, some starved; the I Plautus.

m

i Vide Apuleium.
m Trin. Act. ii. Scen. 4.

k

Juvenal.

trees were all blasted; the swine died of the meazles, the cattle of the murrain, the sheep of the rot; they that stood were ragged, bare, and bald as your hand; nothing was ever reared there, not a duckling, or a goose. Hospitium fuerat calamitatis." Was not this man like to sell it?

LV.

Vulgi expectatio.-Expectation of the vulgar is more drawn and held with newness than goodness; we see it in fencers, in players, in poets, in preachers, in all where fame promiseth any thing; so it be new, though never so naught and depraved, they run to it, and are taken. Which shews, that the only decay, or hurt of the best men's reputation with the people is, their wits have out-lived the people's palates. They have been too much or too long a feast.

LVI.

Claritas patria.-Greatness of name in the father oft-times helps not forth, but overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth; so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first, than doth the second: he dies between; the possession is the third's.

LVII.

Eloquentia.-Eloquence is a great and diverse thing nor did she yet ever favour any man so much as to become wholly his. He is happy that can arrive to any degree of her grace. Yet there are who prove themselves masters of her, and absolute lords; but I believe they may mistake their evidence for it is one thing to be eloquent in the schools, or in the hall; another at the bar, or in the

Mart. lib. i. ep. 85.

pulpit. There is a difference between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting. To make arguments in my study, and confute them, is easy; where I answer myself, not an adversary. So I can see whole volumes dispatched by the umbratical doctors on all sides: but draw these forth into the just lists; let them appear sub dio, and they are changed with the place, like bodies bred in the shade; they cannot suffer the sun or a shower, nor bear the open air they scarce can find themselves, that they were wont to domineer so among their auditors: but indeed I would no more choose a rhetorician for reigning in a school, than I would a pilot for rowing in a pond.

LVIII.

Amor et Odium.-Love that is ignorant, and hatred have almost the same ends: many foolish lovers wish the same to their friends, which their enemies would as to wish a friend banished, that they might accompany him in exile; or some great want, that they might relieve him; or a disease, that they might sit by him. They make a causeway to their country by injury, as if it were not honester to do nothing, than to seek a way to do good by a mischief.

LIX.

Injuria.-Injuries do not extinguish courtesies : they only suffer them not to appear fair. For a man that doth me an injury after a courtesy, takes not away that courtesy, but defaces it: as he that writes other verses upon my verses, takes not away the first letters, but hides them.

LX.

Beneficia.-Nothing is a courtesy, unless it be meant us; and that friendly and lovingly. We owe

no thanks to rivers, that they carry our boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats, that they be nourishing. For these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not. It is true, some men may receive a courtesy, and not know it; but never any man received it from him that knew it not. Many men have been cured of diseases by accidents; but they were not remedies. I myself have known one helped of an ague by falling into a water, another whipped out of a fever: but no man would ever use these for medicines. It is the mind, and not the event, that distinguisheth the courtesy from wrong. My adversary may offend the judge with his pride and impertinences, and I win my cause; but he meant it not me as a courtesy. I scaped pirates by being shipwrecked, was the wreck a benefit therefore? No: the doing of courtesies aright, is the mixing of the respects for his own sake, and for mine. He that doeth them merely for his own sake, is like one that feeds his cattle to sell them he hath his horse well drest for Smithfield.

LXI.

Valor rerum.-The price of many things is far above what they are bought and sold for. Life and health, which are both inestimable, we have of the physician as learning and knowledge, the true tillage of the mind, from our school-masters. But the fees of the one, or the salary of the other, never answer the value of what we received; but served to gratify their labours.

LXII.

Memoria.-Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate, and frail: it is the first of our faculties that age invades. Seneca, the father, the

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