live more sparingly than ordinarily?  Let him be styled a man of frugality.  Is another impertinent, and apt to brag a little?  He requires to be reckoned entertaining to his friends.  But [another] is too rude, and takes greater liberties than are fitting.  Let him be esteemed a man of sincerity and bravery.  Is he too fiery, let him be numbered among persons of spirit.  This method, in my opinion, both unites friends, and preserves them in a state of union.  But we invert the very virtues themselves, and are desirous of throwing dirt upon the untainted vessel.  Does a man of probity live among us? he is a person of singular diffidence; we give him the name of a dull and fat-headed fellow.  Does this man avoid every snare, and lay himself open to no ill-designing villain; since we live amid such a race, where keen envy and accusations are flourishing?  Instead of a sensible and wary man, we call him a disguised and subtle fellow.  And is any one more open, [and less reserved] than usual in such a degree as I often have presented myself to you, Maecenas, so as perhaps impertinently to interrupt a person reading, or musing, with any kind of prate?  We cry, “[this fellow] actually wants common sense.”  Alas! how indiscreetly do we ordain a severe law against ourselves!  For no one Is born without vices:  he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.  When my dear friend, as is just, weighs my good qualities against my bad ones, let him, if he is willing to be beloved, turn the scale to the majority of the former (if I have indeed a majority of good qualities), on this condition, he shall be placed in the same balance.  He who requires that his friend should not take offence at his own protuberances, will excuse his friend’s little warts.  It is fair that he who entreats a pardon for his own faults, should grant one in his turn.

Upon the whole, forasmuch as the vice anger, as well as others inherent in foolish [mortals], cannot be totally eradicated, why does not human reason make use of its own weights and measures; and so punish faults, as the nature of the thing demands?  If any man should punish with the cross, a slave, who being ordered to take away the dish should gorge the half-eaten fish and warm sauce; he would, among people in their senses, be called a madder man than Labeo.  How much more irrational and heinous a crime is this!  Your friend has been guilty of a small error (which, unless you forgive, you ought to be reckoned a sour, ill-natured fellow), you hate and avoid him, as a debtor does Ruso; who, when the woful calends come upon the unfortunate man, unless he procures the interest or capital by hook or by crook, is compelled to hear his miserable stories with his neck stretched out like a slave. [Should my friend] in his liquor water my couch, or has he thrown down a jar carved by the hands of Evander:  shall he for this [trifling] affair, or because in his hunger he has taken a chicken before me out of my part of the dish, be the less agreeable friend to me? [If so], what could I do if he was guilty of theft, or had betrayed things committed to him in confidence, or broken his word.  They who are pleased [to rank all] faults nearly on an equality, are troubled when they come to the truth of the matter:  sense and morality are against them, and utility itself, the mother almost of right and of equity.