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