De Garrulitate

And yet there is no member of human bodies that Nature has so strongly enclosed within a double fortification, as the tongue, entrenched within with a barricado of sharp teeth, to the end that, if it refuses to obey and keep silent when reason presses the glittering reins within, we should fix our teeth in it till the blood comes, rather than suffer the inordinate and unseasonable din. For, according to the saying of Euripides,

Our miseries do not spring

From houses wanting locks or bolts;

But from unbridled tongues,

Ill used by prating fools and dolts.

And truly, I must tell you, that they who think that houses without doors, and purses without strings, are of no use to their masters, yet at the same time set neither fence nor door before their lips, but suffer a continual torrent of vain and idle discourse to flow through them, like the perpetual flux of water through the mouth of the Pontic sea, seem to me to have the least esteem for human speech of all men in the world. Whence it comes to pass that they never gain belief, which is the end of all discourse. For the main scope and intention of all men that speak is to[*](See Eurip. Bacchae, 385.) gain a belief of what they utter with those that hear them; whereas talkative noise-makers are never believed, let them speak never so much truth. For as wheat, when crowded into a musty vessel, is found to exceed in measure, but to be unwholesome for use; so the discourse of a loquacious person swells and enlarges itself with lies and falsehood, but in the mean time it loses all force of persuasion.

Then again, there is no man of modesty and civility but would be careful of preserving himself from drunkenness. For anger, as some are of opinion, is the next neighbor to madness, while drunkenness doth dwell in the very same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness itself, inferior to it in continuance of time, yet far exceeding it as it is voluntary, since it is a madness of our own choice. Now there is nothing for which drunkenness is so much abominated and decried, as for that it is the cause of inordinate and unlimited babbling and prating.

Heated with wine, the man at other times

Both wise and grave sings loose and wanton rhymes;

lie minds not loud indecent laughter then,

Nor mimic dancing, scorned by sober men.

[*](See Odyss. XIV. 464.)

And yet both singing, laughing, and dancing are all but trifles to that which follows, the consequences of which are oft-times fatal:

He blurts those secrets forth, which once revealed,

Too late he wishes they had been concealed.

This is that which oftentimes proves dangerous, if not terrible, to the discoverer. And who knows but that the poet might here design to resolve a question much disputed among philosophers,—that is to say, what the difference is between being tipsy and stark drunk,—by attributing to the former only mirth and jollity of humor, but branding the latter with the foul reproach of noxious babbling? For, according to the proverb,

What the sober heart conceals,

That the drunken heart reveals.

Wherefore it is reported of Bias, that sitting very silent at a compotation, drinking only when it came to his turn, and being laughed at by one whose tongue ran at random, who for his silence called him mope and fool, he made this reply: Find me out that fool, said he, that e’er could hold his tongue in his cups.

A citizen of Athens, having invited the king of Persia’s ambassadors to a magnificent feast, at their request gave the same invitation to the most eminent philosophers in the city, to bear them company. Now, when all the rest were propounding of themes, and raising arguments pro and con, and others were maintaining of paradoxes to show their wit and learning, only Zeno sat still, so reserved and mute that the ambassadors took notice of it; and thereupon, after they thought they had opened his heart with two or three lusty brimmers, Pray tell us, Zeno, said they, what report we shall make concerning thee to our master? To whom Zeno: Nothing more, said he, but that there was an old man at Athens that could hold his tongue in the midst of his cups. Such profound and divine mysterious virtues are silence and sobriety; whereas drunkenness is loquacious, void of reason and understanding, and therefore full of jangling and impertinent tautologies. Wherefore the philosophers, when they come to define drunkenness, call it vain talk over wine. So that drinking is not condemned, provided a man keep himself within the bounds of silence; only vain and silly discourse makes wine-bibbing to be drunkenness. He then that is drunk talks idly over his wine; but the babbler does it everywhere,—in the market-place, at the theatre, in the public walks, as well by night as by day. If he be a physician,

certainly he is more troublesome than the disease; if your companion in a voyage, more insupportable than the qualms occasioned by the tumbling of the sea. If he praise thee, his panegyric is more offensive than the reproaches of another. It is a greater pleasure to converse with vicious men, so they be discreet in their language, than with twaddlers, though never so honest. Therefore Nestor in Sophocles, desirous to appease exasperated Ajax, mildly thus rebuked him:

I blame thee not, for though thy words are ill,

Thy deeds bespeak thee brave and valiant still.

[*](From Sophocles Frag. 770.)

But there is not the same excuse to be made for a vain babbling fellow; for the ill government of his tongue corrupts and vitiates all the merits of his actions.

Lysias had given to a certain accused criminal an oration of his own writing. He, having read it several times over, came to Lysias very much dejected, and told him that, upon his first perusal of it, it seemed to him to be a most admirable piece; but after he had read it three or four times over, he could see nothing in it but what was very dull and insipid. To whom Lysias, smiling: What, said he, is not once enough to speak it before the judges? And yet do but consider the persuasive eloquence and grace that is in Lysias’s writing, and then I may be bold to affirm,

That no man living e’er was favored more

By sacred Muse that violet garlands wore.

Certain it is that, of all the commendations that were ever given to Homer, this is the truest, that he alone avoided being irksome to his readers, as one that was always new and still flourishing, as it were in the prime of poetic beauty. And yet in speaking thus of himself,

I hate vain repetitions, fondly made,

Of what has been already plainly said,

[*](Odyss. XII. 452.)

he shows how careful he is to shun that satiety which, as it were, lies in wait for all speech, alluring the ear from one relation into another, and still recreating the reader with fresh variety, in such a manner that he never thinks himself satisfied. Whereas men that let their tongues run at random rend and tear the ears with their tautologies, like those that, after writing-tables have been newly cleansed and wiped, deface them again with their impertinent scrawls and scratches.