things but of mean appearance, but of singular efficacy. For as the wronging or cherishing of seeds or young plants is that that is most important to their thriving; (and as it was noted that the first six kings, being in truth as tutors of the state of Rome in the infancy thereof, was the principal cause of the immense greatness of that state which followed;) so the culture and manurance of minds in youth hath such a forcible, though unseen, operation, as hardly any length of time or contention of labour can countervail it afterwards. And it is not amiss to observe also, how small and mean faculties gotten by education, yet when they fall into great men or great matters, do work great and important effects; whereof we see a notable example in Tacitus of two stage players, Percennius and Vibulenus, who by their faculty of playing put the Pannonian armies into an extreme tumult and combustion: for there arising a mutiny amongst them upon the death of Augustus Cæsar, Blæsus the lieutenant had committed some of the mutineers, which were suddenly rescued; whereupon Vibulenus got to be heard speak, which he did in this manner :-" These poor innocent wretches, appointed to cruel death, you have restored to behold the light: but who shall restore my brother to me, or life unto my brother, that was sent hither in message from the legions of

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Germany, to treat of the common cause? and he hath murdered him this last night by some of his fencers and ruffians, that he hath about him for his executioners upon soldiers. Answer, Blæsus, what is done with his body? The mortalest enemies do not deny burial. When I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain beside him; so that these my fellows, for our good meaning, and our true hearts to the legions, may have leave to bury us." With which speech he put the army into an infinite fury and uproar : whereas truth was he had no brother, neither was there any such matter; but he played it merely as if he had been upon the stage.

But to return: we are now come to a period of rational knowledges; wherein if I have made the divisions other than those that are received, yet would I not be thought to disallow all those divisions which I do not use: for there is a double necessity imposed upon me of altering the divisions. The one, because it differeth in end and purpose, to sort together those things which are next in nature, and those things which are next in use: for if a secretary of state should sort his papers, it is like in his study or general cabinet he would sort together things of a nature, as treaties, instructions, &c. but in his boxes or particular cabinet he would sort

together those that he were like to use together, though of several natures; so in this general cabinet of knowledge it was necessary for me to follow the divisions of the nature of things; whereas if myself had been to handle any particular knowledge, I would have respected the divisions fittest for use. The other, because the bringing in of the deficiences did by consequence alter the partitions of the rest: for let the knowledge extant, for demonstration sake, be fifteen; let the knowledge with the deficiences be twenty; the parts of fifteen are not the parts of twenty; for the parts of fifteen are three and five; the parts of twenty are two, four, five, and ten: so as these things are without contradiction, and could `not otherwise be.

WE proceed now to that knowledge which considereth of the Appetite and Will of Man; whereof Solomon saith, "Ante omnia, fili, custodi cor tuum; nam inde procedunt actiones vitæ" (My son, keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life). In the handling of this science, those which have written seem to me to have done as if a man, that professeth to teach to write, did only exhibit fair copies of alphabets and letters joined, without giving any precepts or directions for the carriage of the hand and framing of the letters: so

have they made good and fair exemplars and copies, carrying the draughts and portraitures of good, virtue, duty, felicity; propounding them well described as the true objects and scopes of man's will and desires; but how to attain these excellent marks, and how to frame and subdue the will of man to become true and conformable to these pursuits, they pass it over altogether, or slightly and unprofitably for it is not the disputing, that moral virtues are in the mind of man by habit and not by nature, or the distinguishing that generous spirits are won by doctrines and persuasions, and the vulgar sort by reward and punishment, and the like scattered glances and touches, that can excuse the absence of this part.

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The reason of this omission I suppose to be that hidden rock whereupon both this and many other barks of knowledge have been cast away; which is, that men have despised to be conversant in ordinary and common matters, (the judicious direction whereof nevertheless is the wisest doctrine, for life consisteth not in novelties or subtilities,) but contrariwise they have compounded sciences chiefly of a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter, chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses. But Seneca giveth an excellent check to eloquence;

"Nocet illis eloquentia, quibus non rerum cupiditatem facit, sed sui" (Eloquence does harm to those in whom it begets a fondness, not of knowledge, but of itself). Doctrine should be such as should make men in love with their lesson, and not with the teacher; being directed to the auditor's benefit, and not to the author's commendation: and therefore those are of the right kind, which may be concluded as Demosthenes concludes his counsel, "Quæ si feceritis, non oratorem duntaxat in præsentia laudabitis, sed vosmetipsos etiam non ita multo post statu rerum vestrarum meliore" (If you follow this plan, you may not at present praise the orator; but you will hereafter applaud yourselves, when you find your affairs benefited by it). Neither needed men of so excellent parts to have despaired of a fortune, which the poet Virgil promised himself, and indeed obtained, who got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning in the expressing of the observations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of Eneas:

"Nec sum animi dubius, verbis ea vincere magnum Quam sit, et angustis hunc addere rebus honorem." Georg. iii. 289. (Nor slight, to grace so mean a theme, the toil, And beautify with flow'rs a barren soil.)

And surely, if the purpose be in good earnest,