n this manner,

He that designs to encounter with a knave,
An equal stock of knavery must have,

seeing he herein advises us to follow other vicious examples, that of
Diogenes may well be returned, who being asked by what means a man might
revenge himself upon his enemy, answered, By becoming himself a good and
honest man. And the same Diogenes may be quoted also against Sophocles,
who, writing of the sacred mysteries, caused great grief and despair to
multitudes of men:--

Most happy they whose eyes are blest to see
The mysteries which here contained be,
Before they die! For only they have joy.
In th' other world; the rest all ills annoy.

This passage being read to Diogenes, What then! says he, shall the
condition of Pataecion, the notorious robber, after death be better than
that of Epaminondas, merely for his being initiated in these mysteries?
In like manner, when one Timotheus on the theatre, singing of the
Goddess Diana, called her furious, raging, possessed, mad, Cinesias
suddenly interrupted him, May thy daughter, Timotheus, be such a
goddess! And witty also was that of Bion to Theognis, who said,--

One cannot say nor do, if poor he be;
His tongue is bound to th' peace, as well as he.
("Theognis," vss. 177, 178.)

How comes it to pass then, said he, Theognis that thou thyself being so
poor pratest and gratest our ears in this manner?

Nor are we to omit, in our reading those hints which, from some other
words or phrases bordering on those that offend us, may help to rectify
our apprehensions. But as physicians use cantharides, believing that,
though their bodies be deadly poison, yet their feet and wings are
medicinal and are antidotes to the poison itself, so must we deal with
poems. If any noun or verb near at hand may assist to the correction of
any such saying, and preserve us from putting a bad construction upon
it, we should take hold of it and employ it to assist a more favorable
interpretation. As some do in reference to those verses of Homer,--

Sorrows and tears most commonly are seen
To be the gods' rewards to wretched men:--

The gods, who have no cause themselves to grieve,
For wretched man a web of sorrow weave.
("Odyssey," iv. 197; "Iliad," xxiv. 526.)

For, they say, he says not of men simply, or of all men, that the gods
weave for them the fatal web of a sorrowful life, but he affirms it only
of foolish and imp