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But because a mind subject to the disorders of passion, like an inflamed eye that cannot bear a great and glaring light, is impatient of a rebuke, without some temperament to qualify and allay its poignancy, therefore the best remedy in this case will be to dash it with a little praise, as in the following: Think, and subdue! on dastards dead to fame I waste no anger, for they feel no shame; But you, the pride, the flower of all our host, My heart weeps blood to see your glory lost! Where, Pandarus, are all thy honors now, Thy winged arrows and unerring bow, Thy matchless skill, thy yet unrivall’d fame, And boasted glory of the Lycian name! Il. XIII. 116; V. 171. And such rebukes as these are also most effectual in reclaiming those that are ready to fall into gross enormities: O where are Oedipus and all his riddles now? and Is this the speech of daring Hercules?Eurip. Phoeniss. 1688; Hercules Furens, 1250. For a mixture of both together not only abates and takes off from that roughness and command which a blunt reprehension seems to carry along with it, but raises in a man a generous emulation of himself, whilst the remembrance of his past virtues shames him out of his present vices and makes him propose his former actions for his future example. But if you compare him with other men, as with his fellow-citizens, his contemporaries, or relations, then vice, which loves to dispute the victory, renders him uneasy and impatient under the comparison, and will be apt to make him grumble, and in an huff bid you be gone then to his betters and not trouble him any longer. And therefore we ought not to fall upon other men’s commendations before him whom we take the liberty to rebuke, unless indeed they be his parents; as Agamemnon in Homer,—; Ah! how unlike his sire is Tydeus’ son!Il. V. 800. and Ulysses in the tragedy called the Scyrians, speaking to Achilles,—; Dost thou, who sprang from a brave Grecian race By spinning thy great ancestors disgrace?
