Moreover, as Thucydides1 says that he is a wise
man who will not venture to incur odium except for matters of the highest concernment, so, when we do undertake
the ungrateful office of censor, it ought to be only upon
weighty and important occasions. For he who is peevish
and angry at everybody and upon every trivial fault, acting
[p. 153]
rather with the imperious pedantry of a schoolmaster than
the discretion of a friend, blunts the edge of his reprehensions in matters of an higher nature, by squandering, like
an unskilful physician, that keen and bitter but necessary
and sovereign remedy of his reproofs upon many slight
distempers that require not so exquisite a cure. And therefore a wise man will industriously avoid the character of
being a person who is always chiding and delights in finding faults. Besides that, whosoever is of that little humor
that animadverts upon every trifling peccadillo only affords
his friend a fairer occasion of being even with him one
time or another for his grosser immoralities. As Philotimus the physician, visiting a patient of his who was
troubled with an inflammation in his liver, but showed
him his forefinger, told him: Sir, your distemper is not a
whitlow. In like manner we may take occasion now and
then to reply upon a man who carps at trifles in another,
—his diversions, pleasantries, or a glass of wine,—Let
the gentleman rather, sir, turn off his whore and leave off
his dicing; for otherwise he is an admirable person. For
he who is dispensed with in smaller matters more willingly
gives his friend the liberty of reprimanding him for greater.
But there is neither child nor brother nor servant himself
able to endure a man of a busy inquisitive humor, who
brawls perpetually, and is sour and unpleasant upon every
inconsiderable occasion.
1 II. 464.
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