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Now as skilful painters, that they may not offend those that have weak eyes, allay their over-bright and gaudy colors by tempering them with darker; so there are some who will not represent their own praises altogether glaring and immoderately splendid, but cast in some defects, some scapes or slight faults, to take away the danger of displeasure or envy. Epeus intolerably brags of his skill in boxing, I’ll crush my adversary’s body, break his bones; yet he would seem to qualify all with this, Is’t not enough that I’m in fight unskilled?II. XXIII. 673 and 670. But, to say truth, to excuse his arrogance with so base a confession is ridiculous. He then who would be an exact man corrects himself for his forgetfulness, ignorance, ambition, or eagerness for certain knowledge and discourses. So does Ulysses when he says of the Sirens, Thus the sweet charmers warbled o’er the main, My soul takes wing to meet the heavenly strain; I give the sign, and struggle to be free; and again, when he sang of his visit to the Cyclops, Their wholesome counsel rashly I declined, Curious to view the man of monstrous kind, And try what social rites a savage lends.Odyss. XII. 192; IX. 228. And for the most part it is a good antidote against envy, to mix amongst our praises those faults that are not altogether ungenerous and base. Therefore many temper them not only with confessions of poverty or unskilfulness, but even of vile descent. So Agathocles, carousing amongst the Sicilian youth in golden bowls very curiously wrought, commanded earthen pots to be brought in. See (says he) what diligence, laboriousness, and fortitude can do! Once we made muggen jugs, but now vessels of gold. For his original was so mean and contemptible, that it was thought he had served in a potter’s shop who at last governed almost all Sicily.
