S. Augustine. What is mere truth and right testimony you call accusation and ill-treatment. The satirist was quite right who wrote—
"To speak the truth to men is to accuse."[9]
And the saying of the comic poet is equally true—
"'Tis flattery makes friends and candour foes."[10]
But tell me, pray, what is the use of this irritation and anger that makes you so on edge? Was it necessary in a life so short to weave such long hopes?
"Have no long hopes! life's shortness cries to man."[11]
You read that often enough but take no count of it. You will reply, I suppose, that you do this from a tender solicitude for your friends, and so find a fair pretext for your error; but what madness it is, under pretext of friendship to others, to declare war on yourself and treat yourself as an enemy.
Petrarch. I am neither covetous nor inhuman enough to be without solicitude for my friends, especially for those whose virtue or deserts attach me to them, for it is those whom I admire, revere, love, and compassionate; but, on the other hand, I do not pretend to be generous enough to court my own ruin for the sake of my friends. What I desire is so to manage my affairs as to have a decent subsistence while I live; and as you have delivered a shot at me from Horace, let me also from the same poet put up a shield in self-defence and profess my desire is the same as his,—
"Let me have books and stores for one year hence, Nor make my life one flutter of suspense!"[12]
And further how I shape my course so that I may in the same poet's words—