aggrandize myself and diminish you, but sometimes not expedient for me to give, though always expedient for you to follow."r So Seneca, after consecrating the five years o. Nero's minority to the immortal glory of learned governors, held on his honest course of good counsel after his master grew extremely corrupt. Nor can this be otherwise; for learning gives men a true sense of their frailty, the casualty of fortune, and the dignity of the soul and its office; whence they cannot think any greatness of fortune a worthy end of their living, and therefore live so as to give a clear and acceptable account to God and their superiors; whilst the corrupter sort of politicians, who are not by learning established in a love of duty, nor ever look abroad into universality, refer all things to themselves, and thrust their persons into the centre of the world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes, without regarding in storms what becomes of the ship of the state, if they can save themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune.

Another charge brought against learned men, which may rather be defended than denied, is, "That they sometimes fail in making court to particular persons." This want of application arises from two causes- the one the largeness of their mind, which can hardly submit to dwell in the examination and observance of any one person. It is the speech of a lover rather than of a wise man, "Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus."s Nevertheless he who cannot contract the sight of his mind, as well as dilate it, wants a great talent in life. The second cause is, no inability, but a rejection upon choice and judgment; for the honest and just limits of observation in one person upon another extend no farther than to understand him sufficiently, so as to give him no offence, or be able to counsel him, or to stand upon reasonable guard and caution with respect to one's self; but to pry deep into another man, to learn to work, wind, or govern him, proceeds from a double heart, which in friendship is want of integrity, and towards princes or superiors want of duty. The eastern custom which forbids subjects to gaze upon princes, though in the outward ceremony barSeneca, Ep. Mor. i. 7.

Oration on the Crown.

barous, has a good moral; for men ought not, by cunning and studied observations, to penetrate and search into the hearts of kings, which the Scripture declares inscrutable.t

Another fault noted in learned men is, "That they often fail in point of discretion and decency of behaviour, and commit errors in ordinary actions, whence vulgar capacities judge of them in greater matters by what they find them in small." But this consequence often deceives; for we may here justly apply the saying of Themistocles, who being asked to touch a lute, replied, "He could not fiddle, but he could make a little village a great city."" Accordingly many may be well skilled in government and policy, who are defective in little punctilios. So Plato compared his master Socrates to the shop-pots of apothecaries painted on the outside with apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign and precious remedies.*

But we have nothing to offer in excuse of those unworthy practices, whereby some professors have debased both themselves and learning, as the trencher philosophers, who, in the decline of the Roman state, were but a kind of solemn parasites. Lucian makes merry with this kind of gentry, in the person of a philosopher riding in a coach with a great lady, who would needs have him carry her lapdog, which he doing with an awkward officiousness, the page said, “He feared the Stoic would turn Cynic." But above all, the gross flattery wherein many abuse their wit, by turning Hecuba into Hellena, and Faustina into Lucretia, has most diminished the value and esteem of learning. Neither is the modern practice of dedications commendable; for books should have no patrons but truth and reason. And the ancient custom was, to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or if to kings and great persons, it was to such as the subject suited. These and the like measures, therefore, deserve

t Prov. xxv.

Cicero, Tuscul. Quæst. i. 2; Plutarch, Themistocles. Conv. iii. 215; and cf. Xen. Symp. v. 7.

Lucian de Merc. Cond. 33, 34. The raillery couched under the word cynic will become more evident if the reader will recollect the word is derived from Kvvos, the Greek name for dog. Those philosophers were called Cynics who, like Diogenes, rather barked than declaimed against the vices and the manners of their age. Ed.

Du Bartas Bethulian's Rescue, b. v. translated by Sylvester.

rather to be censured than defended. Yet the submission of learned men to those in power cannot be condemned. Diogenes, to one who asked him "How it happened that philosophers followed the rich, and not the rich the philosophers?" answered, "Because the philosophers know what they want, but the rich do not."a And of the like nature was the answer of Aristippus, who having a petition to Dionysius, and no ear being given him, fell down at his feet, whereupon Dionysius gave him the hearing, and granted the suit; but when afterwards Aristippus was reproved for offering such an indignity to philosophy as to fall at a tyrant's feet, he replied, "It was not his fault if Dionysius's ears were in his feet." Nor was it accounted weakness, but discretion, in him that would not dispute his best with the Emperor Adrian, excusing himself, "That it was reasonable to yield to one that commanded thirty legions."d These and the like condescensions to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for though they may have some show of external meanness, yet in a judgment truly made, they are submissions to the occasion, and not to the person.

We proceed to the errors and vanities intermixed with the studies of learned men, wherein the design is not to countenance such errors, but, by a censure and separation thereof to justify what is sound and good; for it is the manner of men, especially the evil-minded, to depreciate what is excellent and virtuous, by taking advantage over what is corrupt and degenerate. We reckon three principal vanities for which learning has been traduced. Those things are vain which are either false or frivolous, or deficient in truth or use; and those persons are vain who are either credulous of falsities or curious in things of little use. But curiosity consists either in matter or words, that is, either in taking pains about vain things, or too much labour about the delicacy of language. There are, therefore, in reason as well as experience, three distempers of learning; viz., vain affectations, vain disputes, and vain imaginations, or effeminate learning, contentious learning, and fantastical learning.

The first disease, which consists in a luxuriancy of style, has been anciently esteemed at different times, but strangely a Laert. Life Diog.

• Demonax.

b Laert. Life Arist.

d

Spartianus, Vit. Adriani, § 15.

prevailed about the time of Luther, who, finding how great a task he had undertaken against the degenerate traditions of the Church, and being unassisted by the opinions of his own age, was forced to awake antiquity to make a party for him; whence the ancient authors both in divinity and the humanities, that had long slept in libraries, began to be generally read. This brought on a necessity of greater application to the original languages wherein those authors wrote, for the better understanding and application of their works. Hence also proceeded a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration of this kind of writing, which was much increased by the enmity now grown up against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary party, and whose writings were in a very different style and form, as taking the liberty to coin new and strange words, to avoid circumlocution and express their sentiments acutely, without regard to purity of diction and justness of phrase. And again, because the great labour then was to win and persuade the people, eloquence and variety of discourse grew into request as most suitable for the pulpit, and best adapted to the capacity of the vulgar; so that these four causes concurring, viz., 1. admiration of the ancients; 2. enmity to the schoolmen; 3. an exact study of languages; and, 4. a desire of powerful preaching,-introduced an affected study of eloquence and copiousness of speech, which then began to flourish. This soon grew to excess, insomuch that men studied more after words than matter, more after the choiceness of phrase, and the round and neat composition, sweet cadence of periods, the use of tropes and figures, than after weight of matter, dignity of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew into esteem the flowing and watery vein of Orosius, the Portugal bishop; then did Sturmius bestow such infinite pains upon Cicero and Hermogenes; then did Car and Ascham, in their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes; then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous; and the whole bent of those times was rather upon fulness than weight.

e Neither a Portuguese or a bishop, but a Spanish monk born at Tarragona, and sent by St. Augustine on a mission to Jerusalem in the commencement of the fifth century.

Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter; and though we have given an example of it from later times, yet such levities have and will be found more or less in all ages. And this must needs discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned, men's works appear like the first letter of a patent, which, though finely flourished, is still but a letter. Pygmalion's frenzy seems a good emblem of this vanity;f for words are but the images of matter, and unless they have life of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is to fall in love with a picture.

Yet the illustrating the obscurities of philosophy with sensible and plausible elocution is not hastily to be condemned; for hereof we have eminent examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and Plato; and the thing itself is of great use; for although it be some hinderance to the severe inquiry after truth, and the farther progress in philosophy, that it should too early prove satisfactory to the mind, and quench the desire of farther search, before a just period is made; yet when we have occasion for learning and knowledge in civil life, as for conference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like, we find it ready prepared to our hands in the authors who have wrote in this way. But the excess herein is so justly contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw the statue of Adonis, who was the delight of Venus, in the temple, said with indignation, "There is no divinity in thee;" so all the followers of Hercules in learning, that is, the more severe and laborious inquirers after truth, will despise these delicacies and affectations as trivial and effe

minate.

The luxuriant style was succeeded by another, which, though more chaste, has still its vanity, as turning wholly upon pointed expressions and short periods, so as to appear concise and round rather than diffusive; by which contrivance the whole looks more ingenious than it is. Seneca

Ovid, Metam. x. 243.

8 M. Fontenelle is an eminent modern instance in the same way; who, particularly in his " Plurality of Worlds," renders the present system of astronomy agreeably familiar, as his "History of the Royal Academy" embellishes and explains the abstruse parts of mathematics and natural philosophy. Shaw.