And therefore it will be then more especially our
concern to look about us when a flatterer is upon the
strain of praising ; which he is sensible enough of, and
accordingly avoids all occasion of suspicion when he attacks us on that side. If indeed he meets with a tawdry
fop, or a dull country clown in a leathern jacket, he plays
upon him with all the liberty imaginable; as Struthias by
way of flattery insulted and triumphed over the sottishness
[p. 119]
of Bias, when he told him that he had out drunk King
Alexander himself, and that he was ready to die of laughter at his encounter with the Cyprian. But if he chance
to fall upon an apprehensive man, who can presently
smoke a design, especially if he thinks he has an eye
upon him and stands upon his guard, he does not immediately assault him with an open panegyric, but first fetches
a compass, and softly winds about him, till he has in some
measure tamed the untractable creature and brought it to
his hand. For he either tells him what high characters
he has heard of him abroad (introducing, as the rhetoricians do, some third person), how upon the exchange the
other day he happily overheard some strangers and persons of great gravity and worth, who spake extreme honorably of him and professed themselves much his admirers; or else he forges some frivolous and false accusation
of him, and then coming in all haste, as if he had heard
it really reported, asks him seriously, if he can call to
mind where he said or did such a thing. And immediately
upon his denial of the matter of fact, which he has reason
enough to expect, he takes occasion to fall upon the subject of his commendation; I wondered indeed, says he, to
hear that you should calumniate your friend, who never
used to speak ill of your enemies; that you should endeavor to rob another man of his estate, who so generously spend your own.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.