"Nothing is more intolerable," he goes on, "than abuse in return for kindness. Would that I might drink so deep of the waters of Lethe that that old man and his insults might wholly flow forth out of my mind. As often as I think of him I not only fall into a rage, but I marvel that so much poison, so much envy, treachery and faithlessness could dwell in a human breast. So help me God! when I think of the scoundrelly soul of that man, the Poets, men so keen, so eloquent, in describing human nature, seem to me either never to have seen poison of this sort or to have been unequal to its description. For what panderer so false, what ruffian so boastful, what old man so ill-conditioned, or what monster so envious, so full of bitterness, so ungrateful, have they ever dared to depict, as this old humbug, who even sets up for a pietist and invents fine names for his very vices? You bid me not to be distressed, and indeed, my dear Thomas, I am bearing the thing patiently when you think how horrible it is. So unexpected misfortunes can but grieve one. How ever could I, in return for my frankness, my kindnesses, my faithfulness, my almost brotherly affection, expect from a man so venerable as he appeared, so noble as he boasted himself to be, so pious as he pretended, such extraordinary abuse? I supposed it to be basest ingratitude not to return favour for favour. I had read that there was a kind of men whom it was safer to offend than to oblige by kindness. I did not believe, until I had learned it by experience, that it was far more dangerous to do good to evil men than evil to good men. For when the ungrateful rascal found that he was under greater obligations to me than he could repay, he turned his attention away from literature, which he had been wretchedly tormenting up to that time, and bent all his energies to ruining me with his infamous tricks. And when he despaired of doing this by his actions (_laboribus_) he sought to crush me with his tongue steeped in the poison of hell, and he did it, too, as far as he could. That I am alive at all, that I have my health, I ascribe to my books, which have taught me to give way to no storm of fate. It is a blow to a man thus born to crime to find that he does but little harm.