838 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



less should it be slighted; since a prudent conduct therein 

 not only expresses a certain gracefulness in men s manners, 

 but is also of great assistance in the commodious despatch 

 both of public and private business. For as action, though 

 an external thing, is so essential to an orator as to be pre 

 ferred before the other weighty and more internal parts of 

 that art, so conversation, though it consist but of externals, 

 is, if not the principal, at least a capital thing in the man 

 of business, and the prudent management of affairs. What 

 effect the countenance may have, appears from the precept 

 of the poet Contradict not your words by your look&quot; 



&quot;Nee vultu destrue verba tuo.&quot; 6 



For a man may absolutely cancel and betray the force of 

 speech by his countenance. And so may actions them 

 selves, as well as words, be destroyed by the look; accord 

 ing to Cicero, who, recommending affability to his brother 

 toward the provincials, tells him it did not wholly consist 

 in giving easy access to them, unless he also received them 

 with an obliging carriage. &quot;It is doing nothing,&quot; says he, 

 &quot;to admit them with an open door and a locked- up coun 

 tenance. 



&quot;Nil interest habere ostium apertum, vultum clausum.&quot; 7 



We learn also that Atticus, previous to the first interview 

 between Cicero and Caesar, in which the issue of the war 

 was involved, seriously advised his friend, in his letters, to 

 compose his countenance and assume a calm tranquillity. 

 Bat if the management of the face alone has so great an 

 effect, how much greater is that of familiar conversation, 

 with all its attendants. Indeed the whole of decorum and 

 elegance of manners seems to rest in weighing and maintain 

 ing, with an even balance, the dignity between ourselves 

 and others ; which is well expressed by Livy, though upon 

 a different occasion, in that character of a person, where 



6 Ovid, Ars Armandi, i. 312. De Petit. Consulatus, xi. 44. 



