to every other disease of affinity thereto, so are we to deal with such
speeches as are of a common import and apt to communicate their value to
other things; we must not confine them to that one thing only to which
they were at first adapted, but transfer them to all other of like
nature, and accustom young men by many parallel instances to see the
communicableness of them, and exercise the promptness of their wits in
such applications so that when Menander says,

Happy is he who wealth and wisdom hath,

they may be able to judge that the same is fitly applicable to glory
and authority and eloquence also. And the reproof which Ulysses gives
Achilles, when he found him sitting in Scyrus in the apartment of the
young ladies,

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv'st thy race,
Dost thou with spinning wool thy birth disgrace?

may be as well given to the prodigal, to him that undertakes any
dishonest way of living, yea, to the slothful and unlearned person,
thus:--

Thou, who from noblest Greeks deriv'st thy race,
Dost thou with fuddling thy great birth disgrace?

or dost thou spend thy time in dicing, or quail-striking, (The word here
used [Greek omitted] denotes a game among the Grecians, which Suidas
describes to be the setting of quails in a round compass or ring and
striking at the heads of them; and he that in the ring struck one had
liberty to strike at the rest in order, but he that missed was obliged
to set up quails for others; and this they did by turns.) or deal in
adulterate wares or griping usury, not minding anything that is great
and worthy thy noble extraction? So when they read,

For wealth, the God most served, I little care,
Since the worst men his favors often wear,
(From the "Aeolus," of Euripides, Frag. 20.)

they may be able to infer, therefore, as little regard is to be had to
glory and bodily beauty and princely robes and priestly garlands, all
which also we see to be the enjoyments of very bad men. Again, when they
read this passage,

A coward father propagates his vice,
And gets a son heir to his cowardice,

they may in truth apply the same to intemperance, to superstition,
to envy, and all other diseases of men's minds. Again, whereas it is
handsomely said of Homer,

Unhappy Paris, fairest to behold!

and

Hector, of noble form.
("Iliad," iii. 39; xvii. 142.)

for herein he shows that a man who hath no greater ex