Chapter 10

And into this pleasant frenzy of much foolish vainglory are there
some men brought sometimes by those whom they themselves do (in a
manner) hire to flatter them. And they would not be content if a
man should do otherwise, but would be right angry--not only if a
man told them truth when they do evil indeed, but also if they
praise it but slenderly.

VINCENT: Forsooth, uncle, this is very truth. I have been ere
this, and not very long ago, where I saw so proper experience of
this point that I must stop your tale long enough to tell you mine.

ANTHONY: I pray you, cousin, tell on.

VINCENT: When I was first in Germany, uncle, it happed me to be
somewhat favoured by a great man of the church and a great estate,
one of the greatest in all that country there. And indeed,
whosoever could spend as much as he could for one thing and
another, would be a right great estate in any country of
Christendom. But vainglorious was he, very far above all measure.
And that was great pity, for it did harm and made him abuse many
great gifts that God had given him. Never was he satiated with
hearing his own praise.

So happed it one day, that he had in a great audience made an
oration in a certain manner, in which he liked himself so well that
at his dinner he thought he sat on thorns till he might hear how
those who sat with him at his board would commend it. He sat musing
a while, devising, as I thought afterward, upon some pretty proper
way to bring it in withal. And at last, for lack of a better, lest
he should have forborne the matter too long, he brought it even
bluntly forth and asked us all who sat at his board's end--for at
his own place in the midst there sat but himself alone--how well we
liked his oration that he had made that day. But in faith, uncle,
when that problem was once proposed, till it was full answered, no
man, I believe, ate one morsel of meat more--every man was fallen
in so deep a study for the finding of some exquisite praise. For he
who should have brought out but a vulgar and common commendation,
would have thought himself shamed for ever. Ten said we our
sentences, by row as we sat, from the lowest unto the highest in
good order, as though it had been a great matter of the common weal
in a right solemn council. When it came to my part--I say it not,
uncle, for a boast--methought that, by our Lady, for my part, I
quit myself well enough! And I liked myself the better because
methought that, being but a foreigner, my words went yet with some
grace in the German tongue, in which, letting my Latin alone, it
pleased me to show my skill. And I hoped to be liked the better
because I saw that he who sat next to me, and should say his
sentence after me, was an unlearned priest, for he could speak no
Latin at all. But when he came forth for his part with my lord's
commendation, the wily fox had been so well accustomed in court to
the craft of flattery that he went beyond me by far. And then might
I see by him what excellence a right mean wit may come to in one
craft, if in all his life he studieth and busieth his wit about no
more but that one. But I made afterward a solemn vow unto myself
that if ever he and I were matched together at that board again,
when we should fall to our flattery I would flatter in Latin, that
he might contend with me no more. For though I could be content to
be outrun by a horse, yet would I no more abide it to be outrun by
an ass.

But, uncle, here began now the game: he that sat highest and was to
speak last, was a great beneficed man, and not only a doctor but
also somewhat learned indeed in the laws of the church. A world was
it to see how he marked every man's word who spoke before him! And
it seemed that the more proper every word was, the worse he liked
it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better one to
surpass it. The man even sweated with the labour, so that he was
fain now and then to wipe his face. Howbeit, in conclusion, when it
came to his course, we who had spoken before him had so taken up
all among us before that we had not left him one wise word to speak
afterward.

ANTHONY: Alas, good man--among so many of you, some good fellow
should have lent him one!

VINCENT: It needed not, as it happened, uncle. For he found out
such a shift that in his flattering he surpassed us all.

ANTHONY: Why, what said he, cousin?

VINCENT: By our Lady, uncle, not one word. But he did as I believe
Pliny telleth of Apelles the painter, in the picture that he
painted of the sacrifice and death of Iphigenia, in the making of
the sorrowful countenances of the noble men of Greece who beheld
it. He reserved the countenance of King Agamemnon her father for
the last, lest, if he made his visage before, he must in some of
the others afterward either have made the visage less dolorous than
he could, and thereby have forborne some part of his praise, or,
doing the uttermost of his craft, might have happed to make some
other look more heavily for the pity of her pain than her own
father, which would have been yet a far greater fault in his
painting. When he came, therefore, to the making of her father's
face last of all, he had spent out so much of his craft and skill
that he could devise no manner of new heavy cheer and countenance
for him but what he had made there aleady in some of the others a
much more heavy one before. And therefore, to the intent that no
man should see what manner of countenance it was that her father
had, the painter was fain to paint him holding his face in his
handkerchief!

The like pageant (in a manner) played us there this good ancient
honourable flatterer. For when he saw that he could find no words
of praise that would surpass all that had been spoken before
already, the wily fox would speak never a word. But as one who were
ravished heavenward with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence
that my lord's grace had uttered in that oration, he set up a long
sigh with an "Oh!" from the bottom of his breast, and held up both
his hands, and lifted up his head, and cast up his eyes into the
welkin, and wept.

ANTHONY: Forsooth, cousin, he played his part very properly. But
was that great prelate's oration, cousin, at all praiseworthy? For
you can tell, I see well. For you would not, I suppose, play as
Juvenal merrily describeth the blind senator, one of the flatterers
of Tiberius the emperor, who among the rest so magnified the great
fish that the emperor had sent for them to show them. This blind
senator--Montanus, I believe they called him--marvelled at the fish
as much as any that marvelled most. And many things he spoke of it,
with some of his words directed unto it, looking himself toward his
left side, while the fish lay on his right side! You would not, I
am sure, cousin, have taken upon you to praise it so, unless you
had heard it.

VINCENT: I heard it, uncle, indeed, and, to say the truth, it was
not to dispraise. Howbeit, surely, somewhat less praise might have
served it--less by a great deal more than half. But this I am sure:
had it been the worst that ever was made, the praise would not have
been the less by one hair. For those who used to praise him to his
face never considered how much the thing deserved, but how great a
laud and praise they themselves could give his good Grace.

ANTHONY: Surely, cousin, as Terence saith, such folk make men of
fools even stark mad. And much cause have their lords to be right
angry with them.

VINCENT: God hath indeed, and is, I daresay. But as for their
lords, uncle, if they would afterward wax angry with them for it,
they would, to my mind, do them very great wrong. For it is one of
the things that they specially keep them for. For those who are of
such vainglorious mind, be they lords or be they meaner men, can be
much better contented to have their devices commended than amended.
And though they require their servant and their friend never so
specially to tell them the very truth, yet shall he better please
them if he speak them fair than if he telleth them the truth.

For they be in the condition that Marciall speaketh of in an
epigram, unto a friend of his who required his judgment how he
liked his verses, but prayed him in any wise to tell him even the
very truth. To him, Marciall made answer in this wise:

"The very truth of me thou dost require.
The very truth is this, my friend dear:
The very truth thou wouldst not gladly hear."

And in good faith, uncle, the selfsame prelate that I told you my
tale of--I dare be bold to swear it, I know it so surely--had one
time drawn up a certain treaty that was to serve for a league
between that country and a great prince. In this treaty he himself
thought that he had devised his articles so wisely and composed
them so well, that all the world would approve them. Thereupon,
longing sore to be praised, he called unto him a friend of his, a
man well learned and of good worship, and very well expert in those
matters, as one who had been divers times ambassador for that
country and had made many such treaties himself. When he gave him
the treaty and he had read it, he asked him how he liked it, and
said, "But I pray you heartily, tell me the very truth." And that
he spake so heartily that the other thought he would fain have
heard the truth, and in that trust he told him a fault in the
treaty. And at the hearing of it he swore in great anger, "By the
mass, thou art a very fool!" The other afterward told me that he
would never tell him the truth again.

ANTHONY: Without question, cousin, I cannot greatly blame him. And
thus they themselves make every man mock them, flatter them, and
deceive them--those, I say, who are of such a vainglorious mind.
For if they be content to hear the truth, let them then make much
of those who tell them the truth, and withdraw their ears from them
who falsely flatter them, and they shall be more truly served than
with twenty requests praying men to tell them true.

King Ladislaus--our Lord absolve his soul!--used much this manner
among his servants. When one of them praised any deed of his or any
quality in him, if he perceived that they said but the truth he
would let it pass by uncontrolled. But when he saw that they set a
gloss on it for his praise of their own making besides, then would
he shortly say unto them, "I pray thee, good fellow, when thou
sayest grace at my board, never bring in a _Gloria Patri_ without a
_sicut erat._ Any act that ever I did, if thou report it again to
mine honour with a _Gloria Patri,_ never report it but with a
_sicut erat_--that is, even as it was and none otherwise. And lift
me not up with lies, for I love it not." If men would use this way
with them that this noble king used, it would diminish much of
their false flattery.

I can well approve that men should commend such things as they see
praiseworthy in other men--keeping them within the bounds of
truth--to give them the greater courage to the increase of them.
For men keep still in that point one quality of children, that
praise must prick them forth. But better it were to do well and
look for none. Howbeit, those who cannot find it in their hearts to
commend another man's good deed show themselves either envious or
else of nature very cold and dull. But without question, he who
putteth his pleasure in the praise of the people hath but a foolish
fancy. For if his finger do but ache of a hot blain, a great many
men's mouths blowing out his praise will scantly do him, among them
all, so much ease as to have one boy blow on his finger!