[Sidenote: 73] In the next place, remember the saying of Thucydides: ‘Well advised is he who accepts unpopularity in a great cause.’ It is the duty of a friend to accept the odium of reproof when questions of great moment are at stake. But if he is everywhere and always being displeased; if he behaves to his intimates as if he were their tutor and not their friend, his reproofs will possess no edge and produce no effect when it comes to matters of importance. He will have frittered away his candour, after the manner of a physician who takes a pungent or bitter drug [Sidenote: B] of a sovereign and costly character, and parcels it out in a large number of petty doses for which there is no necessity. No! while a friend will, for his own part, carefully avoid such unremitting censoriousness, the incessant niggling and pettifogging of some other person will afford him an opening to attack those faults which are more serious. Once when a man with an ulcerated liver showed the physician Philotimus a sore on his finger, the doctor observed, ‘My good sir, your case is not a matter of a whitlow!’ So when some one is finding fault with a number of insignificant peccadilloes, the real friend will be offered the opportunity of saying to him, ‘What have his tippling and foolery to do with us? My good sir, let our friend here dismiss his mistress or stop dicing, and he is otherwise an admirable fellow.’ If a man finds that allowance is made [Sidenote: C] for his trifling errors, he will take it in good part when a friend speaks his mind against those which are of more moment. But to be everlastingly girding, to be bitter and harsh on all occasions, to be continually meddling and taking cognisance of every action, is intolerable even to a child or a brother, nay, unendurable even to a slave.
Again, it is no more true of the folly of our friends than it is—despite Euripides—of old age, that
Our friends have their right actions, and we should keep an eye upon these no less than upon their errors. We should, in fact, begin by zealously praising them. In dealing with iron we have first to soften it with heat before the chilling process [Sidenote: D] can impart to it the consistency and hardness of steel. So with our friends. First we warm and fuse them with praise; then a quiet application of candour serves as a tempering douche. We have, for instance, the opportunity of saying, ‘Is there any comparison between the other conduct and this? Do you see what good fruit comes of doing the right thing? This is what your friends expect of you; it is like you, and what nature meant you for. The other conduct is abominable; away with it