The boldest men are daunted oftentimes,
When they're reproached with their parents' crimes:
(Euripides, "Hippolytus," 424.)
When any man is crushed by adverse fate,
His spirit should be low as his estate.
And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men's lives by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: "Wherefore is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited because of my father's defects?" For he that can encounter such speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of Heraclitus, that
Whate'er is said, though void of sense and wit,
The size of a fool's intellect doth fit,
will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.
These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the hurt we might get by the study of poems.
Now, as on a vine the fruit oftentimes lies concealed and hidden under its large leaves and luxuriant branches, so in the poet's phrases and fictions that encompass them there are also many profitable and useful things concealed from the view of young men. This, however, ought not to be suffered; nor should we be led away from things themselves thus, but rather adhere to such of them as tend to the promoting of virtue and the well forming of our manners. It will not be altogether useless, therefore, to treat briefly in the next place of passages of that nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving all longer discussion, and the trimming up and furnishing them with a multitude of instances, to those who write more for display and ostentation.
First, therefore, let our young man be taught to understand good and bad manners and persons, and from thence apply his mind to the words and deeds which the poet decently assigns to either of them. For example, Achilles, though in some wrath, speaks to Agamemnon thus decently:—
Nor, when we take a Trojan town, can I
With thee in spoils and splendid prizes vie;
(For this and the five following quotations,
see "Iliad," i. 163; ii. 226; i. 128; ii. 231;
iv. 402 and 404.)
whereas Thersites to the same person speaks reproachfully in this manner:—
'Tis thine whate'er the warrior's breast inflames,
The golden spoil, thine the lovely dames.
With all the wealth our wars and blood bestow,
Thy tents are crowded and thy chests o'erflow.