For the comedians introduce such brave promises as these:
Come, sir, let me but fight that fellow there;
I’ll beat him soft as sponge or jellies are.
Besides, no real friend will assist in the execution of a design,
unless, being first advised with, he approve of it as either honest or
useful. Whereas the flatterer, though permitted to consult and give his
opinion about an undertaking, not only out of a paltry desire to comply
with and gratify his friend at any rate, but lest he should be looked
upon as disaffected to the business, servilely closes with and advances
his proposal, how unreasonable soever. For there are few rich men or
princes of this mind:
Give me a friend, though a poor beggar he,
Or meaner than the meanest beggar be,
If he his thoughts but freely will impart,
And boldly speak the language of his heart;[114]
for they, like actors in a tragedy, must have a chorus of their friends
to join with them in the concert, or else the claps of the pit to
encourage them. Whereupon Merope in the tragedy speaks thus:
Make choice of those for friends, who never knew
The arts of wheedling and betraying you;
But those poor rascals never entertain,
Who please you only with design to gain.[115]
But alas! they invert the counsel, and abominate those who deal
freely with them and advise them obstinately for the best, whilst
pitiful cringing cheats and impostors are admitted not only into their
houses, but into their affections and the nearest concernments of
their life. You shall have some of them indeed more plain and simple
than the rest, who confess themselves unworthy to consult about such
weighty affairs, but are ready to serve you in the executive part
of a design. But the more subtle hypocrite comes in at the consult,
knits his brows, declares his consent by the gravity of a look or a
nod, but speaks never a word, unless perchance, when the great man
delivers his opinion, he cries, Lord! sir, you prevented me; I was just
going to say so. For, as the mathematicians tell us that surfaces and
lines, which are incorporeal and creatures of the understanding only,
are neither bended nor moved nor extended of themselves, but are so
affected together with the bodies whose extremities they are; so you
shall observe the flatterer attends only the motion of another’s sense,
opinion, or passion, without any principle of action in himself. So
that the disparity betwixt them thus far is easily discernible.
And yet more easily in the manner they perform their good offices. For
the kindnesses of a friend, like an animate creature, have their most
proper virtues deep within, without any parade or pageantry on the
outside. Nay, many times, as a faithful physician cures his patient
when he least knows of it, so a true friend, either present or absent,
as occasion serves, is solicitous about your concerns, when perhaps
you know nothing of it. Such was the excellent Arcesilaus, as in his
other actions, so particularly in his kindness to Apelles, native of
Chios, whom finding extremely indigent in his sickness, he repeated
his visit to him with twenty drachms in his pocket; and sitting by his
bedside, You have got nothing here, said he, but Empedocles’s elements,
fire, water, earth, and the surrounding air; neither, methinks, do you
lie easily. And with that, stirring up his pillow, he put the money
privately under his head; which when the good old woman his nurse found
and in great wonder acquainted Apelles with, Aye, says he, smiling a
little, this is a piece of Arcesilaus’s thievery. And the saying that
children resemble their parents is found true also in philosophy.
For when Cephisocrates was impeached of high treason, and Lacydes,
an intimate acquaintance of Arcesilaus, with several others of his
friends, stood by him at his trial, the counsel for the state desired
that the prisoner’s ring, wherein lay the principal evidence against
him, might be produced in court; which Cephisocrates hearing dropped
it softly off his finger, and Lacydes observing it set his foot upon
it and buried it in the ground. Whereupon being acquitted, and going
afterwards to pay his respects and thanks to his judges, one of them
(who, it seems, had taken notice of the passages) told him that his
thanks were owing to Lacydes, and so related the whole story, when yet
Lacydes had never mentioned it.
Thus I am verily persuaded the Gods confer several benefits upon us
which we are not sensible of, upon no other motive in the world than
the mere pleasure and satisfaction they take in acts of kindness and
beneficence.
But on the contrary, the seemingly good offices of a flatterer
have nothing of that sincerity and integrity, that simplicity and
ingenuousness, which recommend a kindness, but are always attended
with bustle and noise, hurry, sweat and contracting the brow, to
enhance your opinion of the great pains he has taken for you; like a
picture drawn in gaudy colors, with folded torn garments, and full of
angles and wrinkles, to make us believe it an elaborate piece and done
to the life.
Besides, the flatterer is so extremely troublesome in recounting the
weary steps he has taken, the cares he has had upon him, the persons he
has been forced to disoblige, with a thousand other inconveniencies he
has labored under upon your account, that you will be apt to say, The
business was never worth all this din and clutter about it.
For a kindness once upbraided loses its grace, turns a burden, and
becomes intolerable. But the flatterer not only reproaches us with his
services already past, but at the very instant of their performance;
whereas, if a friend be obliged to speak of any civility done another,
he modestly mentions it indeed, but attributes nothing to himself.
Thus, when the Lacedaemonians supplied the people of Smyrna in great
scarcity of provisions, and they gratefully resented and extolled the
kindness; Why, replied the Spartans, it was no such great matter, we
only robbed ourselves and our cattle of a dinner. For a favor thus
bestowed is not only free and ingenuous, but more acceptable to the
receiver, because he imagines his benefactor conferred it on him
without any great prejudice to himself.
23. But the temper of a flatterer is discernible from that of a
friend not only in the easiness of his promises and the troublesome
impertinence that attends his good offices, but more signally in this,
that the one is ready to promote any base and unworthy action, the
other those only which are fair and honest. The one labors to please,
the other to profit you. For a friend must not, as Gorgias would have
him, beg another’s assistance in a just undertaking, and then think to
compensate the civility by contributing to several that are unjust.
In wisdom, not in folly, should they join.
And if, after all, he cannot prevail upon him, he may disengage himself
with the reply of Phocion to Antipater; Sir, I cannot be both your
friend and your flatterer,—that is, Your friend and not your friend
at the same time. For we ought to be assistant to him in his honest
endeavors indeed, but not in his knaveries; in his counsels, not in
his tricks; in appearing as evidence for him, but not in a cheat;
and must bear a share in his misfortunes, but not in his acts of
injustice. For if a man ought not to be as much as conscious of any
unworthiness in his friend, how much less will it become him to partake
in it? Therefore, as the Lacedaemonians, defeated and treating of
articles of peace with Antipater, prayed him to command them any thing,
howsoever grievous and burthensome to the subject, provided it were not
base and dishonorable; so a friend, if you want his assistance in a
chargeable, dangerous, and laborious enterprise, embarks in the design
cheerfully and without reserve; but if such as will not stand with
his reputation and honor, he fairly desires to be excused. Whereas,
on the contrary, if you offer to put a flatterer upon a difficult or
hazardous employment, he shuffles you off and begs your pardon. For but
sound him, as you rap a vessel to try whether it be whole or cracked,
full or empty; and he shams you off with the noise of some paltry,
frivolous excuses. But engage him in any mean, sordid, and inglorious
service, abuse him, kick him, trample on him, he bears all patiently
and knows no affront. For as the ape, who cannot keep the house like
a dog or bear a burden like an horse or plough like an ox, serves to
be abused, to play the buffoon, and to make sport; so the parasite,
who can neither plead your cause nor be your counsel nor espouse your
quarrel, as being averse from all painful and good offices, denies you
in nothing that may contribute to your pleasure, turns pander to your
lust, pimps for a whore, provides you an handsome entertainment, looks
that your bill be reasonable, and sneaks to your miss; but he shall
treat your relations with disrespect and impudently turn your wife out
of doors, if you commission him. So that you may easily discover him in
this particular. For put him upon the most base and dirty actions; he
will not spare his own pains, provided he can but gratify you.
24. There remains yet another way to discover him by his inclinations
towards your intimates and familiars. For there is nothing more
agreeable to a true and cordial acquaintance than to love and to be
beloved with many; and therefore he always sedulously endeavors to
gain his friend the affections and esteem of other men. For being
of opinion that all things ought to be in common amongst friends,
he thinks nothing ought to be more so than they themselves. But the
faithless, the adulterate friend of base alloy, who is conscious to
himself of the disservice he does true friendship by that false coin
of it which he puts upon us, is naturally full of emulation and envy,
even towards those of his own profession, endeavoring to outdo them in
their common talent of babbling and buffoonery, whilst he reveres and
cringes to his betters, whom he dares no more vie with than a footman
with a Lydian chariot, or lead (to use Simonides’s expression) with
refined gold. Therefore this light and empty counterfeit, finding he
wants weight when put into the balance against a solid and substantial
friend, endeavors to remove him as far as he can, like him who, having
painted a cock extremely ill, commanded his servant to take the
original out of sight; and if he cannot compass his design, then he
proceeds to compliment and ceremony, pretending outwardly to admire
him as a person far beyond himself, whilst by secret calumnies he
blackens and undermines him. And if these chance to have galled and
fretted him only and have not thoroughly done their work, then he
betakes himself to the advice of Medius, that arch parasite and enemy
to the Macedonian nobility, and chief of all that numerous train which
Alexander entertained in his court. This man taught his disciples to
slander boldly and push home their calumnies; for, though the wound
might probably be cured and skinned over again, yet the teeth of
slander would be sure to leave a scar behind them. By these scars, or
(to speak more properly) gangrenes and cancers of false accusations,
fell the brave Callisthenes, Parmenio, and Philotas; whilst Alexander
himself became an easy prey to an Agnon, Bagoas, Agesias, and
Demetrius, who tricked him up like a barbarian statue, and paid the
mortal the adoration due to a God. So great a charm is flattery, and,
as it seems, the greatest with those we think the greatest men; for
the exalted thoughts they entertain of themselves, and the desire of a
universal concurrence in the same opinion from others, both add courage
to the flatterer and credit to his impostures. Hills and mountains
indeed are not easily taken by stratagem or ambuscade; but a weak mind,
swollen big and lofty by fortune, birth, or the like, lies naked to the
assaults of every mean and petty aggressor.
25. And therefore we repeat here what we advised at our entrance into
this discourse, that we cashier every vain opinion of ourselves and
all self-love. For their inbred flattery only disposes and prepares
us to a more favorable reception of that from without. For, if we did
but square out actions according to the famous oracular precept of
knowing ourselves, rate things according to their true intrinsic value,
and withal, reflecting upon our own nature and education, consider
what gross imperfections and failures mix with our words, actions,
and affections, we should not lie so open to the attempts of every
flatterer who designs upon us. For even Alexander himself, being
reminded of his mortality by two things especially, the necessity of
sleep and the use of women, began to stagger in the opinion they had
made him conceive of his godhead. And did we in like manner but take an
impartial survey of those troubles, lapses, and infirmities incident to
our nature, we should find we stood in no need of a friend to praise
and extol our virtues, but of one rather that would chide and reprimand
us for our vices. For first, there are but few who will venture to deal
thus roundly and impartially with their friends, and fewer yet who
know the art of it, men generally mistaking railing and ill language
for a decent and friendly reproof. And then a chiding, like any other
physic, if ill-timed, racks and torments you to no purpose, and works
in a manner the same effect with pain that flattery does with pleasure.
For an unseasonable reprehension may be equally mischievous with an
unseasonable commendation, and force your friend to throw himself upon
the flatterer; like water which, leaving the too precipitous and rugged
hills, rolls down upon the humble valleys below. And therefore we ought
to qualify and allay the sharpness of our reproofs with a due temper of
candor and moderation,—as we would soften light which is too powerful
for a distempered eye,—lest our friends, being plagued and ranted upon
every trivial occasion, should at last fly to the flatterer’s shade for
their ease and quiet. For all vice, Philopappus, is to be corrected
by an intermediate virtue, and not by its contrary extreme, as some
do who, to shake off that sheepish bashfulness which hangs upon their
natures, learn to be impudent; to lay aside their country breeding,
endeavor to be comical; to avoid the imputation of softness and
cowardice, turn bullies; out of an abhorrence of superstition, commence
atheists; and rather than be reputed fools, play the knave; forcing
their inclinations, like a crooked stick, to the opposite extreme for
want of skill to set them straight.
But it is highly rude to endeavor to avoid the suspicion of flattery
by only being insignificantly troublesome, and it argues an ungenteel,
unconversable temper in a man to show his just abhorrency of mean
and servile ends in his friendship only by a sour and disagreeable
behavior; like the freedman in the comedy, who would needs persuade
himself that his railing accusation fell within the limits of that
freedom in discourse which every one had right to with his equals.
Since therefore it is absurd to incur the suspicion of a flatterer by
an over-obliging and obsequious humor, and as absurd, on the other
hand, in endeavoring to decline it by an immoderate latitude in our
apprehensions, to lose the enjoyments and salutary admonitions of a
friendly conversation, and since the measures of what is just and
proper in this, as in other things, are to be taken from decency and
moderation; the nature of the argument seems to require me to conclude
it with a discourse upon this subject.
26. Now seeing this liberty of animadverting on other men’s failures is
liable to so many exceptions, let us in the first place carefully purge
it from all mixture of self-love and interest, lest any private motive,
injury, grudge, or dissatisfaction of our own should seem to incite us
to the undertaking. For such a chiding as this would not pass for an
effect of kindness but of passion, and looks more like complaint than
an admonition; for the latter has always something in it that sounds
kind and yet awful, whereas the other betrays only a selfish and narrow
disposition. And therefore we usually honor and revere our monitor, but
contemn and recriminate upon a querulous accuser. As Agamemnon could by
no means digest the moderate censures of Achilles, yet bore well enough
with the severer reprimand of Ulysses,
O were thy sway the curse of meaner powers,
And thou the shame of any host but ours![116]
being satisfied of his wisdom and good intentions; for he rated him
purely upon the account of the public, the other upon his own. And
Achilles himself, though of a rough and untractable disposition and
ready enough to find faults where there were none,[117] yet heard
Patroclus patiently when he ranted him thus:
Unpitying man! no Peleus caused thy birth,
Nor did the tender Thetis bring thee forth;
But rocks, hard as thy heart, and th’ angry sea,
Clubbed to produce a monstrous man like thee.[118]
For as Hyperides the orator desired the Athenians to consider not only
whether his reflections were sharp, but also whether his sharpness
was disinterested and incorrupt; so the reproofs of a friend, if they
proceed from a sincere and disinterested affection, create veneration,
awe, and confusion in the criminal to whom they are addressed. And if
he once perceive that his friend, waiving all offences against himself,
chides him purely for those committed against others, he can never
hold out against the force of so powerful a rebuke; for the sweet and
obliging temper of his monitor gives a keener edge to his admonitions.
And therefore it has been wisely said, that especially in heats and
differences with our friends we ought to have a peculiar regard to
their honor and interest. Nor is it a less argument of friendship,
for a man who is laid aside and out of favor himself to turn advocate
in behalf of another equally despised and neglected; as Plato being
in disgrace with Dionysius begged audience of him, which he readily
granting in expectation of being entertained with an account of his
grievances, Plato addressed himself to him after this manner: Sir,
said he, if you were informed there were a certain ruffian come over
into your island of Sicily with design to attempt upon your majesty’s
person, but for want of an opportunity could not execute the villany,
would you suffer him to go off unpunished? No, by no means, Plato,
replied the king; for we ought to detest and revenge not only the overt
acts but the malicious intentions of our enemies. Well then, on the
other hand, said Plato, if there should come a person to court out of
pure kindness and ambition to serve your majesty, and you would not
give him an opportunity of expressing it, were it reasonable to dismiss
him with scorn and disrespect? Whom do you mean, said Dionysius? Why,
Aeschines, replied Plato, as honest and excellent a person as any in
the school of Socrates, and of a very edifying conversation; who,
having exposed himself to the difficulties of a tedious voyage that
he might enjoy the happiness of a philosophical converse with your
majesty, has met with nothing but contempt in return to the kindness
he intended. This friendly and generous temper of mind so strangely
affected Dionysius, that he hugged and embraced Plato, and treated
Aeschines with a great deal of honor and magnificence.
27. In the next place, let us free our discourse from all contumelious
language, all laughter, mockery, and scurrility, which spoil the relish
of our reprehensions. For, as when a chirurgeon makes an incision in
the flesh he uses decent neatness and dexterity in the operation,
without the affected and superfluous gesticulations of a quack or
mountebank, so the lancing the sores of a friend may admit indeed of a
little humor and urbanity, but that so qualified that it spoil not the
seriousness and gravity requisite to the work. For boldness, insolence,
and ill language destroy its force and efficacy. And therefore the
fiddler reparteed handsomely enough upon Philip, when he undertook to
dispute with him about the touch upon his instrument: God forbid that
your majesty should be so unhappy as to understand a fiddle better than
I do. But Epicharmus was too blunt upon Hiero, who invited him to
supper a little after he had put some of his acquaintance to death,
when he replied, Aye, but you could not invite me the other day to the
sacrifice of my friends. And so was Antiphon too rude in his reflection
upon Dionysius, when, on occasion of a discourse about the best sort
of bronze, he told him that was the best in his opinion of which
the Athenians made statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. For these
scurrilous abusive jests are most certainly disagreeable and pain to
no purpose, being but the product of an intemperate wit, and betraying
the enmity and ill-nature of him who takes the liberty to use them;
and whosoever allows himself in them does but wantonly sport about the
brink of that pit which one day will swallow him up. For Antiphon was
afterward executed under Dionysius; and Timagenes was in disgrace with
Augustus Caesar, not for any extravagant freedom in his discourse,
but only because he had taken up a foolish custom of never talking
seriously but always scurrilously at every entertainment and walk where
the emperor desired his company,—