thence the honesty of the
Phaeacians,--because it was not likely they would expose him in a
strange place and leave him there with his goods by him untouched, so
as to get nothing by their dishonesty,--then he makes use of a very fit
test for this purpose, and deserves commendation for his wisdom in that
action. Some also there are who condemn that passage of the putting him
on shore when he was asleep, if it really so happened, and they tell
us that the people of Tuscany have still a traditional story among them
concerning Ulysses, that he was naturally sleepy, and therefore a man
whom many people could not freely converse with. But if his sleep
was but shammed, and he made use of this pretence only of a natural
infirmity, by counterfeiting a nap, to hide the strait he was in at the
time in his thoughts, betwixt the shame of sending away the Phaeacians
without giving them a friendly collation and hospitable gifts, and the
fear he had of being discovered to his enemies by the treating such a
company of men together, they then approve it.

Now, by showing young men these things, we shall preserve them from
being carried away to any corruption in their manners, and dispose them
to the election and imitation of those that are good, as being before
instructed readily to disapprove those and commend these. But this
ought with the most care to be done in the reading of tragedies wherein
probable and subtle speeches are made use of in the most foul and wicked
actions. For that is not always true which Sophocles saith, that

From evil acts good words can never come.

For even he himself is wont to apply pleasant reasonings and plausible
arguments to those manners and actions which are wicked or unbecoming.
And in another of his fellow-tragedians, we may see even Phaedra herself
represented as justifying her unlawful affection for Hippolytus by
accusing Theseus of ill-carriage towards her. And in his Troades, he
allows Helen the same liberty of speech against Hecuba, whom she judgeth
to be more worthy of punishment than herself for her adultery, because
she was the mother of Paris that tempted her thereto. A young man
therefore must not be accustomed to think anything of that nature
handsomely or wittily spoken, nor to be pleased with such colorable
inventions; but rather more to abhor such words as tend to the defence
of wanton acts than the very acts themselves.

And lastly, it will be useful likewise to inquire into t