one's own or another's person, an assumed habit and name; a difference
betwixt him that affects or acts a prince's, a philosopher's, a
magistrate's, a fool's part, and him that is so indeed; and what liberty
those old satirists have had; it is a cento collected from others; not I,
but they that say it.

[801] "Dixero si quid forte jocosius, hoc mihi juris
Cum venia, dabis"------

"Yet some indulgence I may justly claim,
If too familiar with another's fame."

Take heed you mistake me not. If I do a little forget myself, I hope you
will pardon it. And to say truth, why should any man be offended, or take
exceptions at it?

"Licuit, semperque licebit,
Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis."

"It lawful was of old, and still will be,
To speak of vice, but let the name go free."

I hate their vices, not their persons. If any be displeased, or take aught
unto himself, let him not expostulate or cavil with him that said it (so
did [802]Erasmus excuse himself to Dorpius, _si parva licet componere
magnis_) and so do I; "but let him be angry with himself, that so betrayed
and opened his own faults in applying it to himself:" [803]"if he be guilty
and deserve it, let him amend, whoever he is, and not be angry." "He that
hateth correction is a fool," Prov. xii. 1. If he be not guilty, it
concerns him not; it is not my freeness of speech, but a guilty conscience,