AIt is a kind of mockery and insult to praise a man’s worth for qualities unbecoming his rank, though they be otherwise laudable, and for qualities also which ought not to be his principal ones; as if you praised a king for being a good painter, or a good architect, or else a good shot with a harquebus or a good tilter at the ring. These praises do no honor unless they are presented in mass and after those that befit him: to wit, justice and the science of leading his people in peace and
