sort recompensed for his discovery. To be ignorant of the value of a suit is simplicity; as well as to be ignorant of the right thereof is want of conscience. Secrecy in suits is a great mean of obtaining; for voicing[1] them to be in forwardness may discourage some kind of suitors, but doth quicken and awake others. But timing of the suit is the principal. Timing, I say, not only in respect of the person that should grant it, but in respect of those which are like to cross it. Let a man, in the choice of his mean,[2] rather choose the fittest mean than the greatest mean; and rather them that deal in certain things, than those that are general. The reparation of a denial is sometimes equal to the first grant; if a man shew himself neither dejected nor discontented. Iniquum petas ut æquum feras,[3] is a good rule, where a man hath strength of favour: but otherwise a man were better rise in his suit; for he that would have ventured at first to have lost the suitor, will not in the conclusion lose[4] both the suitor and his own former favour. Nothing is thought so easy a request to a great person, as his letter; and yet, if it be not in a good cause, it is so much out of his
- ↑ Voice. To announce; proclaim; report.
- ↑ Mean. Agent; instrument. Rare in the singular.
'Follow me, soldiers: we'll devise a mean
To reconcile you all unto the King."
Shakspere. II. King Henry VI. iv. 8.
- ↑ Ask what is unreasonable, that you may get what is equitable. "Nec omnino fine ratione est, quod vulgo dicitur, Iniquum petendum, ut aequum feras." M. Fabii Quintiliani de Institutione Oratoria Liber IV. v. 16.
- ↑ Lose. To ruin; to destroy.
"What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose."
Shakspere. Hamlet. iii. 2.
