but gives him a promise to be better provided,—
The wretch has made himself a slave to shame,
And drags a tiresome, though an unforged chain.[38]
Persaeus, being about to accommodate a friend with a sum of money, paid
it publicly in the market, and made the conditions before a banker,
remembering, it may be, that of Hesiod,—
Seem not thy brother’s honesty to doubt;
Yet, smiling, call a witness to his hand.[39]
But when his friend marvelled and asked, How now, so formally and
according to law? Yea, quoth he, because I would receive my money again
as a friend, and not have to trouble the law to recover it. For many
out of bashfulness, not taking care to have good security at first,
have been forced afterwards to break with their friends, and to have
recourse to law for their money.
11. Again, Plato writing to Dionysius, by Helicon of Cyzicus, gives
the bearer a good character for honesty and moderation, but withal in
the postscript tells him, Yet this I write of a man, who, as such, is
by nature an animal subject to change. Xenocrates, though a man of
rigid morals, was prevailed upon by this kind of modesty to recommend
to Polysperchon a person, as it proved in the end, not so honest as
he was reputed. For when the Macedonian in compliment bade him call
for whatever he wanted, he presently desired a talent of silver.
Polysperchon ordered it accordingly to be paid him, but despatched
away letters immediately to Xenocrates, advising him for the future
to be better acquainted with those he recommended. Now all this came
to pass through Xenocrates’s ignorance of his man; but we oftentimes
give testimonials and squander away our money to advance such as we
are very well satisfied have no qualification or desert to recommend
them, and this too with the forfeiture of our reputation, and without
the pleasure that men have who are profuse upon whores and flatterers,
but all the while in an agony, and struggling with that impudence which
does violence to our reason. Whereas, if at any time, that verse can
here be properly used,—