ordinary gamesters, the gains go to the box, so falls it out to such as contend; the lawyers get all; and therefore if they would consider of it, aliena pericula cantos, other men’s misfortunes in this kind, and common experience might detain them. [4016]The more they contend, the more they are involved in a labyrinth of woes, and the catastrophe is to consume one another, like the elephant and dragon’s conflict in Pliny; [4017]the dragon got under the elephant’s belly, and sucked his blood so long, till he fell down dead upon the dragon, and killed him with the fall, so both were ruined.  ’Tis a hydra’s head, contention; the more they strive, the more they may:  and as Praxiteles did by his glass, when he saw a scurvy face in it, brake it in pieces:  but for that one he saw many more as bad in a moment:  for one injury done they provoke another cum foenore, and twenty enemies for one. Noli irritare crabrones, oppose not thyself to a multitude:  but if thou hast received a wrong, wisely consider of it, and if thou canst possibly, compose thyself with patience to bear it.  This is the safest course, and thou shalt find greatest ease to be quiet.

[4018]I say the same of scoffs, slanders, contumelies, obloquies, defamations, detractions, pasquilling libels, and the like, which may tend any way to our disgrace:  ’tis but opinion; if we could neglect, contemn, or with patience digest them, they would reflect on them that offered them at first.  A wise citizen, I know not whence, had a scold to his wife:  when she brawled, he played on his drum, and by that means madded her more, because she saw that he would not be moved.  Diogenes in a crowd when one called him back, and told him how the boys laughed him to scorn, Ego, inquit, non rideor, took no notice of it.  Socrates was brought upon the stage by Aristophanes, and misused to his face, but he laughed as if it concerned him not:  and as Aelian relates of him, whatsoever good or bad accident or fortune befel him going in or coming out, Socrates still kept the same countenance; even so should a Christian do, as Hierom describes him, per infamiam et bonam famam grassari ad immortalitatem, march on through good and bad reports to immortality, [4019]not to be moved:  for honesty is a sufficient reward, probitas sibi, praemium; and in our times the sole recompense to do well, is, to do well:  but naughtiness will punish itself at last, [4020]_Improbis ipsa nequitia supplicium_.  As the diverb is,

       “Qui bene fecerunt, illi sua facta sequentur;
        Qui male fecerunt, facta sequentur eos:” 

       “They that do well, shall have reward at last: 
        But they that ill, shall suffer for that’s past.”