Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/165

Th' unsleeping vengeance heed of heaven on high.—
None as a friend should with a brother vie:
But if like him thou hold another dear,
Let no offences on thy side appear:
Nor lie with idle tongue:^[1] if he begin
Offence of word and deed, chastise his sin^[2]

man is a crown to her husband, but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. Proverbs, xii. 4.

1. Nor lie with idle tongue.] Devise not a lie against thy brother, neither do the like to thy friend. Ecclesiasticus, vii. 12.
2. Chastise his sin.] Far more liberal is the counsel of the son of Sirach:
   Admonish a friend: it may be, he hath not done it; and if he have done it, that he may do it no more.
   Admonish thy friend: it may be he hath not said it; and if he have, that he speak it not again.
   Admonish a friend, for many times it is a slander; and believe not every tale.
   There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his heart: and who is he, that hath not offended with his tongue?
   Ecclesiasticus, xix.
   Cicero says elegantly, “Care is to be taken lest friendships convert themselves even into grievous enmities: whence arise bickerings, backbitings, contumelies: these are yet to be borne, if they be bearable: and this compliment should be paid to the ancient friendship, that the person in fault should be he that inflicts the injury, not he that suffers it.”De Amicitia, c. 21.
   The author of the Pythagorean “golden verses” has a line which deserves indeed to be written in letters of gold:

   Hate not thy tried friend for a slender fault.