For a mixture of both together not only abates and takes off from that
roughness and command which a blunt reprehension seems to carry along
with it, but raises in a man a generous emulation of himself, whilst
the remembrance of his past virtues shames him out of his present vices
and makes him propose his former actions for his future example. But
if you compare him with other men, as with his fellow-citizens, his
contemporaries, or relations, then vice, which loves to dispute the
victory, renders him uneasy and impatient under the comparison, and
will be apt to make him grumble, and in an huff bid you be gone then
to his betters and not trouble him any longer. And therefore we ought
not to fall upon other men’s commendations before him whom we take the
liberty to rebuke, unless indeed they be his parents; as Agamemnon in
Homer,—