VINCENT: It needed not, as it happened, uncle. For he found out such a shift that in his flattering he surpassed us all.
ANTHONY: Why, what said he, cousin?
VINCENT: By our Lady, uncle, not one word. But he did as I believe Pliny telleth of Apelles the painter, in the picture that he painted of the sacrifice and death of Iphigenia, in the making of the sorrowful countenances of the noble men of Greece who beheld it. He reserved the countenance of King Agamemnon her father for the last, lest, if he made his visage before, he must in some of the others afterward either have made the visage less dolorous than he could, and thereby have forborne some part of his praise, or, doing the uttermost of his craft, might have happed to make some other look more heavily for the pity of her pain than her own father, which would have been yet a far greater fault in his painting. When he came, therefore, to the making of her father's face last of all, he had spent out so much of his craft and skill that he could devise no manner of new heavy cheer and countenance for him but what he had made there aleady in some of the others a much more heavy one before. And therefore, to the intent that no man should see what manner of countenance it was that her father had, the painter was fain to paint him holding his face in his handkerchief!
The like pageant (in a manner) played us there this good ancient honourable flatterer. For when he saw that he could find no words of praise that would surpass all that had been spoken before already, the wily fox would speak never a word. But as one who were ravished heavenward with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence that my lord's grace had uttered in that oration, he set up a long sigh with an "Oh!" from the bottom of his breast, and held up both his hands, and lifted up his head, and cast up his eyes into the welkin, and wept.
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."