with the most foolish of all their subjects? They have no means to take any advantage of him; if he but say, " "Twas because he is my king," he thinks he has said enough to express that he therefore suffered himself to be overcome. This quality stifles and consumes the other true and essential qualities; they are buried under royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves withal, but actions that directly concern it, and that merely respect the functions of their place; 'tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being So. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by this prevailing light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tibequence refused by rius; he refused it, holding that, though it had been just, he could derive no advantage from a judgment so partial, and that was so little free to decide. The prize of elo Tiberius, and why. As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorize all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imitation also. Every one of Alexander's followers carried their heads awry as he did;1 and the flatterers of Dionysius run against one another in his presence, stumbled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to make out they were as shortsighted as he.? Hernia has sometimes also served to recommend a man to favour; I have seen deafness affected; and because the master hated his wife, Plutarch has seen his courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and, which is yet more, uncleanness and all manner of dissoluteness has been in fashion; as also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion, effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be; and by an example yet more dangerous than that of Mithridates's flatterers, who, because their master pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have incisions and cauteries made in their 1 Plutarch, On the Difference between his wife, turned away his wife also, whom, he Flatterer and the Friend. 2 Id. ib. 8 Id. ib., who only says that he knew man who, because his friend divorced nevertheless, he went to visit, and sen for sometimes privately to his house which was discovered by the very wife of his friend. limbs;1 for these others suffered the soul, a more delicate and noble part, to be cauterized. But to end where I began; the Emperor Adrian disputing with the philosopher Favori nus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory; for which his friends rebuking him ; "You talk simply," said he; 2" would you not have him wiser than I, who commands thirty legions?" Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio: "And I," said Pollio,3 " say nothing; for it is not prudent to write in contest with him who has power to proscribe." And he was in the right; for Dionysius, because he could not equal Philoxenus in poetry, and Plato in discourse, condemned one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a slave in the island of Ægina. CHAPTER VIII. OF THE ART OF CONVERSATION. 'Tis a custom of our justice to condemn some for a warn ing to others. To condemn them for having The end of pundone amiss were folly, as Plato says, for what 6 is done can never be undone; but 'tis that they ishments, and how the vices of some men may serve for instruc may offend no more, and that others may avoid tion to others. the example of their offence; we do not correct the man we Plutarch, On the Difference between the Flatterer and the Friend. 2 Spartian, Life of Adrian, c. 15. 3 Macrobius, Saturnal. ii. 4. 4 Or rather because he was not able to bear the slight opinion which Philoxenus showed of his poetry. Diodorus of Sicily, xv. 6, says, that one day, at supper-time, as they were reading some worthless poems of this tyrant, that excellent poet Philoxenus, being charged to give his ⚫pinion of them, was too free in his anwer to please Dionysius, for which the tyrant was so much incensed against him that he ordered him to be sent immediately to the quarries. 5 Montaigne and his authority Plutarch (On Contentment of Mind) are mistaken here with regard to Plato, who was sold a slave in the island of Ægina, by order of Dyonysius the tyrant, because he had spoken too freely to him; as Dio dorus of Sicily says positively, xv. cap. 2 and more particularly also Diog. Laert Life of Plato. 6 Laws, xi. hang; we correct others by him. I do the same; my errors are sometimes natural and incorrigible; but the good which virtuous men do the public in making themselves imitated, I perhaps may do in making my manners avoided ; Nonne vides Albi ut male vivat filius? utque Barrus inops? magnum documentum, ne patriam rem "Behold the son Of Albus there, and Barrus, too, undone! A striking lesson is the spendthrift's fate, To caution youth from squandering their estate;' while I publish and accuse my own imperfections, somebody will learn to be afraid of them. The parts that I most esteem in myself derive more honour from decrying, than from commending my own manners; which is the reason why I so often fall into and so much insist upon that strain. But, when all is summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss. A man's accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never. There may be some of my complexion, who better instruct me by contrariety than similitude, and more by avoiding than imitating; the elder Cato had a regard to this sort of discipline, when he said that "the wise may learn more of fools than fools of the wise;"2 and Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the lyre, who used to make his scholars go to hear one that lived over against him, and played very ill, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency than any example of clemency could do; a good rider does not so much mend my seat as an attorney or a Venetian on horseback; and a clownish way of speaking does more to reform mine than the most elegant. Every day the foolish countenance of another is advertising and advising me; that which pricks, rouses and incites, much better than that which tickles. The present time is fitting to reform us backward; more by dissenting than agreeing, by differing 1 Horace, Sat i. 4, 109. 2 Plutarch, in Vita. than consenting. Profiting little by good examples, I make use of those that are ill, which are everywhere to be found; I endeavour to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as affable as 1 see others rough; and as good as I see others evil; but I proposed to myself impracticable measures. greater advantage The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose, I should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight than my hearing and speech. The Athenians, and also the Romans, kept this exercise in great honour in their academies; the Italians retain some footsteps of it to this day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion, that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once. If I converse with a man of mind, and no flincher, who presses hard upon and digs at me right and left, his Conversation of imagination raises up mine; jealousy, glory, than the reading and contention stimulate and raise me up to of books. something above myself; unison is a quality altogether obnoxious in conversation, but as our minds fortify themselves by the communication of vigorous and regular understandings, 'tis not to be expressed how much they lose and degenerate by the continual commerce and frequentation we have with those that are mean and sickly; there is no contagion that spreads like that; I know sufficiently by experience what 'tis worth a yard. I love to discourse and dispute; but it is with but few men, and for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great persons, and to make a parade of a man's wit and power of talking is, in my opinion, very unbecoming a man of honour. Folly is a scurvy quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex at it as I do, is another sort of disease, little inferior in troublesomeness to folly itself; and this is what I would now accuse in myself. I enter into conversation and dispute with great liberty and ease, forasmuch as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, or taking any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, though never so contrary to my own; there is no fancy so frivolous and extravagant that does not seem to me a suitable product of the human mind. We, who deprive our judgments of the right of determining, look calmly at adverse opinions, and if we incline not our judgments to them, yet we easily give them the hearing. Where one scale is totally empty, I let the other waver under old wives' dreams; and I think myself excusable, if I rather choose the odd number, Thursday rather than Friday; and if I had rather be twelfth or fourteenth than thirteenth at table; if I had rather on a journey see a hare run by me than cross my way; and rather give my man my left foot than my right, when he comes to dress me. All such whimsies as are in use amongst us deserve at least to be hearkened unto; for my part, they only with me import inanity, but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature; and he who will not suffer himself to proceed so far, perhaps falls into the vice of obstinacy, to avoid that of superstition. The contradictions of judgments, then, do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conversation, and not of dictation. At every opposition we do not consider whether or no it be just, but, right or wrong, how to disengage ourselves; instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friends; "Thou art a fool; thou knowest not what thou Art talking about." I love stout expressions amongst gallant men, and to have them speak as they think; we must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness as to cere monious sound of words. I love a strong and manly fa |