ESSAYS.

to carry it. If affection lead a man to favor the less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving⁴⁴² or disabling the better deserver. In suits which a man doth not well understand, it is good to refer them to some friend of trust and judgment, that may report whether he may deal in them with honor; but let him choose well his referendaries,⁴⁴³ for else he may be led by the nose. Suitors are so distasted⁴⁴⁴ with delays and abuses, that plain dealing in denying to deal in suits at first, and reporting the success barely,⁴⁴⁵ and in challenging no more thanks than one hath deserved, is grown not only honorable, but also gracious. In suits of favor, the first coming ought to take little place;⁴⁴⁶ so far forth⁴⁴⁷ consideration may be had of his trust, that if intelligence of the matter could not otherwise have been had but by him, advantage be not taken of the note,⁴⁴⁸ but the party left to his other means, and in some sort recompensed for his discovery. To be ignorant of the value of a suit is simplicity; as well as to be ignorant of the right thereof, is want of conscience. Secrecy in suits is a great mean of obtaining; for voicing them to be in forwardness may discourage some kind of suitors, but doth quicken and awake others. But timing of the suit is the principal; timing, I say, not only in respect of the person that should grant it, but in respect of those which are like to cross it. Let a man, in the choice of his mean, rather choose the fittest mean, than the greatest mean; and rather them that deal in certain things, than those that are general. The reparation of a denial is sometimes equal to the first grant, if a man show himself neither dejected nor discontented. “Iniquum petas, ut æquum feras,”⁴⁴⁹ is a good rule, where a man hath strength of favor; but otherwise a man were better rise in his suit; for he that would