mar the play and disgrace the author himself, Menander, and yet nevertheless, the vulgar sort do applaud, clap their hands, and highly commend and admire him for his deed: in mine advice it would be no great pain or difficulty for thee to give him the hearing with patience and silence, without praising him after a servile and flattering manner, otherwise than you think it meet and reason: for if in such things as these you be not master of yourself, how will you be able to hold when some dear friend of yours shall read unto you either some foolish rhyme or bad poesy that himself hath composed? if he shall shew unto you some oration of his own foolish and ridiculous penning? you will fall a-praising of him, will you? you will keep a-clapping of your hands with other flattering jacks? I would not else. And if you do so, how can you reprove him when he shall commit some gross fault in greater matters? how shall you be able to admonish him, if he chance to forget himself in the administration of some magistracy or in his carriage in wedlock, or in politic government? And verily, for mine own part, I do not greatly allow and like of that answer of Pericles, who being requested by a friend to bear false witness in his behalf, and to bind the same with an oath, whereby he should be forsworn: I am your friend (quoth he) as far as the altar; as if he should have said: Saving my conscience and duty to the gods: for surely he was come too near already unto him. But he who hath accustomed himself long before neither to praise against his own mind one who hath made an oration, nor to applaud unto him who hath sung, nor to laugh heartily at him who came out with some stale or poor jest which had no grace; he will (I trow) never suffer his friend and familiar to proceed so far as to demand such a request of him, or once be so bold as to move him (who before had refused in smaller trifles to satisfy his desire) in this manner: Be perjured for me; bear false witness for my sake; or pronounce an unjust sentence for the love of me.
After the same manner we ought to be prepared and provided beforehand against those that be instant to borrow money of us, namely, if we have been used to deny them in matters that neither be of great moment nor hard to be refused. There was one upon a time, who being of this mind, that there was nothing so honest as to crave and receive, begged of Archelaus, the king of Macedonia (as he sate at supper), the cup of gold whereout he drunk himself; the king called unto his page that waited at his trencher, and commanded him to give the said cup unto
