CHAP. II.] DISSIMULATION SOMETIMES IMPOLITIC. 82? 



which a man brazens out his own defects, and foroes them 

 upon others for excellencies ; and the better to secure this 

 end, he will feign a distrust of himself in those things wherein 

 he really excels : like poets, who, if you except to any par 

 ticular verse in their composition, will presently tell you that 

 single line cost them more pains than all the rest ; and then 

 produce you another, as suspected by themselves, for your 

 opinion ; whilst, of all the number, they know it to be the 

 best and least liable to exception. But above all, nothing 

 conduces more to the well-representing a man s self, and 

 securing his own right, than not to disarm one s self by too 

 much sweetness and good-nature, which exposes a man to 

 injuries and reproaches ; but rather, in all cases, at times, to 

 dart out some sparks of a free and generous mind, that have 

 no less of the sting than the honey. This guarded behaviour, 

 attended with a ready disposition to vindicate themselves, 

 some men have from accident and necessity, by means of 

 somewhat inherent in their person or fortune, as we find in 

 the deformed, illegitimate, and disgraced ; who, if they do 

 not want virtue, generally prove fortunate. 



The expressing or declaring of a man s self is a very 

 different thing from the showing himself, as not relating to 

 virtue, but to the particular actions of life. And here no 

 thing is more politic than to preserve a prudent or sound 

 moderation or medium in disclosing or concealing one s mind 

 as to particular actions. For though profound silence, the 

 hiding of counsels, and managing all things by blind and 

 deaf artifice, is an useful and extraordinary thing ; yet it 

 often happens that dissimulation produces errors which 

 prove snares. And we see that the men of greatest repute 

 for politics, scruple not openly and generously to declare 

 their ends without dissimulation : thus Sylla openly declared, 

 &quot; He wished all mortals happy or unhappy, as they were his 

 friends or enemies.&quot; k So Caesar, upon his first expedition into 

 Gaul, professed &quot;he had rather be the first man in an obscure 

 village, than the second at Rome.&quot; 1 And when the war was 

 begun, he proved no dissembler, if Cicero says truly of him, 

 &quot; That he did not refuse, but in a manner required to be 

 called tyrant, as he was.&quot; So we find, in an epistle of 

 Cicero to Atticus, how little of a dissembler Augustus was, 



k Pltrt. Plut. Epist. ad Alt. x. Ep. i*. 



