“It seems to me, my lord Unico, that you run too much to extremes. For one may sometimes be silly in a way that is not so easily seen, and faults are not always of the same degree: and it may be that a man will refrain from public and too patent folly,—such as that would be of which you tell, to dance a morris-dance about the piazza,—and yet cannot refrain from praising himself out of season, from displaying a tiresome conceit, from occasionally saying something to cause laughter, which falls cold and wholly flat from being said inopportunely. And these faults are often covered by a kind of veil that does not suffer them to be seen by him who commits them, unless he searches for them with care; and although our eyes see little for many reasons, they most of all are clouded by conceit, since everyone likes to make a show in that wherein he believes himself proficient, whether his belief be true or false. “Therefore it seems to me that the right course in this regard lies in a certain prudent and judicious choice, and in discerning the more or less which all things gain or lose by being done opportunely or out of season. And although the Courtier may possess good enough judgment to perceive these distinctions, yet I think it would surely be easier for him to attain what he is seeking, if we were to broaden his mind by a few precepts, and show him the way and as it were the foundations upon which he must build,—than if he were to follow generalities only. 7.—“Last evening the Count spoke about Courtiership so fully and so beautifully, that he has aroused in me no little fear and doubt whether I shall be able to satisfy this noble company so well in what I have to say, as he did in what it fell to him to say. Yet to make myself a sharer in his fame as far as I can, and to be sure of avoiding this one mistake at least, I shall contradict him in nothing. “Accepting his opinions then, and among others his opinion as to the Courtier’s noble birth, capacities, bodily form and grace of feature,—I say that to win praise justly and good opinion from everyone and favour from the princes whom he serves, I deem it necessary for the Courtier to know how to dispose his whole life, and to make the most of his good qualities in intercourse with all men everywhere, without exciting envy thereby. And how difficult this in itself is, we may infer from the fewness of those who are seen to reach the goal; for by nature we all are more ready to censure mistakes than to praise things well done, and many men, from a kind of innate malignity and although they clearly see the good, seem to strive with every effort and pains to find either some hidden fault in us or at least some semblance of fault.