For a buffoon is like a mad
dog that has a worm in his tongue, which makes him bite at all that
light in his way; and as he can do nothing alone, but must have somebody
to set him that he may throw at, he that performs that office with the
greatest freedom and is contented to be laughed at to give his patron
pleasure cannot but be understood to have done very good service, and
consequently deserves to be well rewarded, as a mountebank's pudding,
that is content to be cut and slashed and burnt and poisoned, without
which his master can show no tricks, deserves to have a considerable
share in his gains.
As for the meanness of these ways, which some may think too base to be
employed to so excellent an end, that imports nothing; for what dislike
soever the world conceives against any man's undertakings, if they do
but succeed and prosper, it will easily recant its error and applaud
what it condemned before; and therefore all wise men have ever justly
esteemed it a great virtue to disdain the false values it commonly sets
upon all things and which itself is so apt to retract. For as those who
go uphill use to stoop and bow their bodies forward, and sometimes creep
upon their hands, and those that descend to go upright, so the lower a
man stoops and submits in these endearing offices, the more sure and
certain he is to rise; and the more upright he carries himself in other
matters, the more like, in probability, to be ruined. And this he
believes to be a wiser course for any man to take than to trouble
himself with the knowledge of arts or arms; for the one does but bring a
man an unnecessary trouble, and the other as unnecessary danger; and the
shortest and more easy way to attain to both is to despise all other men
and believe as steadfastly in himself as he can--a better and more
certain course than that of merit.
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