And now some cannot endure to hear the Stoics, who centre all true riches, generosity, nobility, and royalty itself in the person of a wise man; but with the flatterer it is the man of money that is both orator and poet, and, if he pleases, painter and fiddler too, a good wrestler, an excellent footman, or any thing, for they never stand with him for the victory in those engagements; as Crisson, who had the honor to run with Alexander, let him designedly win the race, which the king being told of afterwards was highly disgusted at him. And therefore I like the observation of Carneades, who used to say that young princes and noblemen never arrived to a tolerable perfection in any thing they learned, except riding; for their preceptors spoil them at school by extolling all their performances, and their wrestling-masters by always taking the foil; whereas the horse, who knows no distinction betwixt a private man and a magistrate, betwixt the rich and the poor, will certainly throw his rider if he knows not how to sit him, let him be of what quality he pleases. And therefore it was but impertinently said of Bion upon this subject, that he who could praise his ground into a good crop were to blame if he bestowed any other tillage upon it. ’Tis granted: nor is it improper to commend a man, if you do him any real kindness thereby. But here is the disparity: that a field cannot be made worse by any commendations bestowed upon it, whereas a man immoderately praised is puffed up, burst, and ruined by it. Thus much then for the point of praising; proceed we in the next place to treat of freedom in their reprehensions. And indeed, it were but reasonable that,—;as Patroclus put on Achilles’s armor and led his war-horse out into the field, yet durst not for all that venture to wield his spear,—; so, though the flatterer wear all the other badges and ensigns of a friend, he should not dare to counterfeit the plain frankness of his discourse, as being a great, massy, and substantial weapon, peculiar to him. Il. XVI. 141. But because, to avoid that scandal and offence which their drunken bouts, their little jests, and ludicrous babling humor might otherwise create, they sometimes put on the face of gravity, and flatter under the vizard of a frown, dropping in now and then a word of correction and reproof, let us examine this cheat too amongst the rest. And indeed I can compare that trifling insignificant liberty of speech to which he pretends to nothing better than that sham Hercules which Menander introduces in one of his comedies. with a light hollow club upon his shoulder; for, as women’s pillows, which seem sufficiently stuffed to bear up their heads, yield and sink under their weight, so this counterfeit freedom in a flatterer’s conversation swells big and promises fair, that when it shrinks and contracts itself it may draw those in with it who lay any stress upon its outward appearance. Whereas the genuine and friendly reprehension fixes upon real criminals, causing them grief and trouble indeed, but only what is wholesome and salutary; like honey that corrodes but yet cleanses the ulcerous parts of the body, and is otherwise both pleasant and profitable. But of this in its proper place. We shall discourse at present of the flatterer who affects a morose, angry, and inexorable behavior towards all but those upon whom he designs, is peevish and difficult towards his servants, animadverts severely upon the failures of his relations and domestics, neither admires nor respects a stranger but superciliously contemns him, pardons no man, but by stories and complaints exasperates one against another, thinking by these means to acquire the character of an irreconcilable enemy to all manner of vice, that he may be thought one who would not spare his favorites themselves upon occasion, and would neither act nor speak any thing out of a mean and dastardly complaisance. And if at any time he undertakes his friend, he feigns himself a mere stranger to his real and considerable crimes; but if he catch him in some petty trifling peccadillo, there he takes his occasion to rant him terribly and thunder him severely off; as, if he see any of his goods out of order, if his house be not very convenient, if his beard be not shaven or his clothes unfashionable, if his dog or his horse be not well looked after. But if he slight his parents, neglect his children, treat his wife scornfully, his friends and acquaintance disrespectfully, and squander away his estate, here he dares not open his mouth, and it is the safest way to hold his tongue. Just as if the master of a wrestling-school should indulge his young champion scholar in drinking and wenching, and yet rattle him about his oil-cruise and body-brush; or as if a schoolmaster should severely reprove a boy for some little fault in his pen or writing-book, but take no notice of the barbarisms and solecisms in his language. For the parasite is like him who hearing a ridiculous impertinent orator finds no fault with his discourse but delivery, blaming him only for having hurt his throat with drinking cold water; or like one who, being to peruse and correct some pitiful scribble, falls foul only upon the coarseness of the paper and the blots and negligence of the transcriber. Thus the parasites about Ptolemy. when he pretended to learning, would wrangle with him till midnight about the propriety of an expression, a verse, or a story; but not a word all this while of his cruelty, insults, superstition, and oppressions of the people. Just as if a chirurgeon should pare a man’s nails or cut his hair, to cure him of a fistula, wen, or other carnous excrescence. But there are others behind, who outdo all the subtlety of the former, such as can claw and please, even whilst they seem to reprehend. Thus when Alexander had bestowed some considerable reward upon a jester, Agis the Argive, through mere envy and vexation, cried out upon it as a most absurd action; which the king overhearing, he turned him about in great indignation at the insolence, saying, What’s that you prate, sirrah? Why truly, replied the man, I must confess, I am not a little troubled to observe, that all you great men who are descended from Jupiter take a strange delight in flatterers and buffoons; for as Hercules had his Cercopians and Bacchus his Silenuses about him, so I see your majesty is pleased to have a regard for such pleasant fellows too. And one time when Tiberius Caesar was present at the senate, there stood up a certain fawning counsellor, asserting that all free-born subjects ought to have the liberty of speaking their sense freely, and should not dissemble or conceal any thing that they might conceive beneficial to the public; who, having thus awakened the attention of his audience, silence being made, and Tiberius impatient to hear the sequel of the man’s discourse, pursued it in this manner: I must tell you of a fault, Caesar, said he, for which we universally blame you, though no man yet has taken the confidence to speak it openly. You neglect yourself, endanger your sacred person by your too much labor and care, night and day, for the public. And he having harangued several things to the same effect, it is reported that Cassius Severus the orator subjoined: This man’s freedom of speech will ruin him. Such artifices as these, I confess, are not very pernicious, but there remains one of a most dangerous consequence to weak men; and that is when a flatterer fastens those vices upon them which are directly contrary to those they are really guilty of. As Himerius, an Athenian parasite, upbraided one of the most miserable and stingy misers of the whole town with carelessness and prodigality, tell ing him he was afraid he should live to see the day when both he and his children should go a begging. Or, on the contrary, when they object niggardliness and parsimony to one that is lavish and profuse, as Titus Petronius did to Nero. Or when they advise arbitrary and tyrannical princes to lay aside their too much moderation and their unprofitable and unseasonable clemency. And like to these are they who shall pretend to be afraid of a half-witted idiot, as of some notable shrewd fellow; and shall tax an ill-natured censorious man, if at any time he speak honorably of a person of worth, of being too lavish in his commendations. You are always, say they, praising men that deserve it not; for who is he, or what remarkable thing did he ever say or do? But they have yet a more signal opportunity of exercising their talent, when they meet with any difference betwixt lovers or friends; for if they see brothers quarrel, or children despise their parents, or husbands jealous of their wives, they neither admonish them nor blame them for it, but inflame the difference. You don’t understand yourself, say they; you are the occasion of all this clutter by your own soft and submissive behavior. If there chance to have happened some little love-skirmish betwixt a miss and her gallant, then the flatterer interposes boldly and adds fresh fuel to the expiring flame, taking the gentleman to task, and telling him how many things he has done which looked a little hard, were not kind, and deserved a chiding. Ungrateful man! can you forget her charms, And former soft embraces in her arms From the Myrmidons of Aeschylus, Frag. 131 . Thus Antony’s friends persuaded him, when he was smitten with his beloved Cleopatra, that she doted on him, still calling him haughty and hard-hearted man. She, said they, has stripped herself of the glories of a crown and former grandeur, and now languishes with the love of you, attending the motion of your camp in the poor sordid figure of a concubine. But you have steeled your heart, and can unmoved Behold her grief, whom once you so much loved. Odyss. X. 329. Now he was strangely pleased to hear of his little unkindness to his mistress, and was more taken with such a chiding than with the highest character they could have given him; but was not sensible that, under the color of a friendly admonition, they really corrupted and debauched him. For such a rebuke as this is just like the bites of a lecherous woman, for it only tickles and provokes, and pleases even whilst it pains you. And as pure wine taken singly is an excellent antidote against hemlock, but if mixed with it renders the poison incurable, because the heat of the wine quickens its circulation to the heart; so some rascally fellows, knowing very well that the liberty of reproving a friend is a quality very hardly compatible with flattery, and, as I may say, the best remedy against it, mix them both together, and flatter you under the very color and pretext of reprimanding you. Upon the whole thereof, Bias seems not to have answered him very pertinently, who asked him which he thought was the most hurtful animal, when he replied, Of wild creatures a tyrant, and of tame ones a flatterer. For he might have answered more accurately, that some flatterers indeed are tame creatures, those shirks who ply about your bath and your table; but they whose calumnies, malignity, and inquisitive meddling humor, like so many gins and snares, reach the ladies’ very closets and bed-chambers, are wild, savage, and untractable. Now one way of arming ourselves against these assaults will be always to remember that,—;since our souls are made up of two different parts, the one sincere, honest, and reasonable, the other brutish, false, and governed by passion,—;the friend always adapts his advice and admonitions to the improvement of the better part (like a good physician, who preserves and advances an healthful constitution where he finds it), whilst the flatterer claws and tickles the irrational part of the man only, debauching it from the rules of right reason by the repeated suggestion of soft and sensual delights. For as there are some sorts of meat which assimilate neither with the blood nor with the spirits, and invigorate neither the nerves nor the marrow, but only provoke lust, swell the paunch, and breed putrid flabby flesh; so he who shall give himself the labor to observe will find that the discourses of a flatterer contribute nothing to the improvement of our prudence and understanding, but either only entertain us with the pleasure of some love-intrigue, or make us indiscreetly angry or envious, or blow us up into an empty troublesome opinion of ourselves, or increase our sorrows by pretending to share in them; or else they exasperate any inbred naughtiness that is in us, or our illiberality or distrustfulness, making them harsh, timorous, and jealous, with idle malicious stories, hints, and conjectures of his own. For he always fastens upon and pampers some distemper of the mind, growing, like a botch or bile. upon its inflamed or putrid part only. Are you angry? Revenge yourself, says he. Covet you any thing? Have it. Are you afraid? Fly. Suspect you this or that? Believe it. But if we find it something difficult to discover him in these attempts upon our passions, because they often violently overpower all the forces of our reason to the contrary, we may then trace him in other instances of his knavery; for he always acts consonant to himself. As, if you are afraid of a surfeit and thereupon are in suspense about your bath and diet, a friend indeed will advise you to act cautiously and take care of your health; but the flatterer persuades you to the bath, bids you feed freely and not starve yourself with mortification. If he observes you want briskness and spirit for action, as being unwilling to undergo the fatigue of a journey or a voyage, he will tell you presently, there is no haste; the business may be well enough deferred, or else transacted by proxy. If at any time you have promised to lend or give a friend a sum of money, and upon second thoughts gladly would, and yet are ashamed to retract your word, the flatterer puts his advice in the worse scale, and inclines the balance to the saving side, and strips you of your squeamish modesty, telling you that you ought not to be so prodigal, who live at great expense and have others to relieve besides him. And therefore, unless we be mere strangers to ourselves,—;to our own covetousness, shamelessness, or timidity,—;the flatterer cannot easily escape our discovery; for he is the great patron of these disorderly passions, endeavoring always to wind us up to excesses of this kind. But enough of this.