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the contagion is very dangerous in the crowd. A man must either imitate the vicious or hate them both are dangerous things, either to resemble them because they are many or to hate many because they are unresembling to ourselves. Merchants who go to sea are in the right when they are cautious that those who embark with them in the same bottom be neither dissolute blasphemers nor vicious other ways, looking upon such society as unfortunate. And therefore it was that Bias pleasantly said to some, who being with him in a dangerous storm implored the assistance of the gods: “Peace, speak softly,” said he, “that they may not know you are here in my company.”--[Diogenes Laertius]--And of more pressing example, Albuquerque, viceroy in the Indies for Emmanuel, king of Portugal, in an extreme peril of shipwreck, took a young boy upon his shoulders, for this only end that, in the society of their common danger his innocence might serve to protect him, and to recommend him to the divine favour, that they might get safe to shore. ‘Tis not that a wise man may not live everywhere content, and be alone in the very crowd of a palace; but if it be left to his own choice, the schoolman will tell you that he should fly the very sight of the crowd: he will endure it if need be; but if it be referred to him, he will choose to be alone. He cannot think himself sufficiently rid of vice, if he must yet contend with it in other men. Charondas punished those as evil men who were convicted of keeping ill company. There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature. And Antisthenes, in my opinion, did not give him a satisfactory answer, who reproached him with frequenting ill company, by saying that the physicians lived well enough amongst the sick, for if they contribute to the health of the sick, no doubt but by the contagion, continual sight of, and familiarity with diseases, they must of necessity impair their own.

Asiaticus Valerius, (one of Caligula’s particular friends, and a man of stomach, that would not easily digest an affront) Caligula told him in public what kind of bedfellow his wife was. Good God! that ever any man should hear this, or a prince speak it, especially to a man of consular authority, a friend, and a husband: and in such a manner too as at once to own his disgust and his adultery. The tribune Chæreas had a weak broken voice, like an hermaphrodite; when he came to Caligula for the word, he would give him sometimes Venus, otherwhiles Priapus, as a slur upon him both ways. Valerius was afterwards the principal instrument in the conspiracy against him; and Chæreas, to convince him of his manhood, at one blow cleft him down the chin with his sword. No man was so forward as Caligula to break a jest, and no man so unwilling to bear it.

It is a fantastical humor, that the same jest in private should make us merry, and yet enrage us in public; nay, we will not allow the liberty that we take. Some railleries we account pleasant, others bitter: a conceit upon a squint-eye, a hunch-back, or any personal defect, passes for a reproach. And why may we not as well hear it as see it? Nay, if a man imitates our gait, speech, or any natural imperfection, it puts us out of all patience; as if the counterfeit were more grievous than the doing of the thing itself. Some cannot endure to hear of their age, nor others of their poverty; and they make the thing the more taken notice of the more they desire to hide it. Some bitter jest (for the purpose) was broken upon you at the table: keep better company then. In the freedom of cups, a sober man will hardly contain himself within bounds. It sticks with us extremely sometimes, that the porter will not let us in to his great master. Will any but a madman quarrel with a cur for barking, when he may pacify him with a crust? What have we to do but to keep further off, and laugh at him? Fidus Cornelius (a tall slim fellow) fell downright a-crying in the senate-house at Corbulo’s saying that “he looked like an ostrich.” He was a man that made nothing of a lash upon his life and manners; but it was worse than death to him a reflection upon his person. No man was ever ridiculous to others that laughed at himself first: it prevents mischief, and it is a spiteful disappointment of those that take pleasure in such abuses. Vatinius, (a man that was made up for scorn and hatred, scurrilous and impudent to the highest degree, but most abusively witty and with all this he was diseased, and deformed to extremity), his way, was always to make sport with himself, and so he prevented the mockeries of other people.