versy;[1] or a right of desert, if it be a suit of petition.[2] If affection lead a man to favor the wrong side in justice, let him rather use his countenance to compound[3] the matter than to carry it.[4] If affection lead a man to favor the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving or disabling[5] the better deserver. In suits which a man doth not well understand, it is good to refer them to some friend of trust and judgment, that may report whether he may deal in them with honor: but let him choose well his referendaries, for else he may be led by the nose. Suitors are so distasted with delays and abuses,[6] that plain dealing in denying to deal in suits at first, and reporting the success[7] barely, and in challenging no more thanks than one hath deserved, is grown not only honorable but also gracious. In suits of favor, the first coming ought to take little place: so far forth consideration may be had of his trust, that if intelligence of the matter could not otherwise have been had but by him, advantage be not taken of the note, but the party left to his other means; and in some 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 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, 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 show himself neither dejected nor discontented. Iniquum petas ut æquum feras [Ask more than is reasonable, that you may get no less] is a good rule, where a man hath strength of favor: 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 both the suitor and his own former favor. Nothing is thought so easy a request to a great person, as his letter; and yet, if it
