tting my Latin alone, it
pleased me to show my skill. And I hoped to be liked the better
because I saw that he who sat next to me, and should say his
sentence after me, was an unlearned priest, for he could speak no
Latin at all. But when he came forth for his part with my lord's
commendation, the wily fox had been so well accustomed in court to
the craft of flattery that he went beyond me by far. And then might
I see by him what excellence a right mean wit may come to in one
craft, if in all his life he studieth and busieth his wit about no
more but that one. But I made afterward a solemn vow unto myself
that if ever he and I were matched together at that board again,
when we should fall to our flattery I would flatter in Latin, that
he might contend with me no more. For though I could be content to
be outrun by a horse, yet would I no more abide it to be outrun by
an ass.

But, uncle, here began now the game: he that sat highest and was to
speak last, was a great beneficed man, and not only a doctor but
also somewhat learned indeed in the laws of the church. A world was
it to see how he marked every man's word who spoke before him! And
it seemed that the more proper every word was, the worse he liked
it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better one to
surpass it. The man even sweated with the labour, so that he was
fain now and then to wipe his face. Howbeit, in conclusion, when it
came to his course, we who had spoken before him had so taken up
all among us before that we had not left him one wise word to speak
afterward.

ANTHONY: Alas, good man--among so many of you, some good fellow
should have lent him one!

VINCENT: It needed not, as it happened, uncle. For he found out
such a shift that in his flattering he surpassed us all.

ANTHONY: Why, what said he, cousin?

VINCENT: By our Lady, uncle, not one word. But he did as I believe
Pliny telleth of Apelles the painter, in the picture that he
painted of the sacrifice and death of Iphigenia, in the making of
the sorrowful countenances of the noble men of Greece who beheld
it. He reserved the countenance of King Agamemnon her father for
the last, lest, if he made his visage before, he must in some of
the others afterward either have made the visage less dolorous than
he could, and thereby have forborne some part of his praise, or,
doing the uttermost of his craft, might have happed to make some
other look more heavily for the pity of her pain th