And that learning should take up too much time or leisure I answer, the most active or busy man that hath been or can be, hath, no question, many vacant times of leisure, while he expecteth the tides and returns 5 of business (except he be either tedious and of no dispatch, or lightly and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be better done by others); and then the question is but how those spaces and times of leisure shall be filled and spent, whether in pleasures or in 10 studies; as was well answered by Demosthenes to his adversary schines, that was a man given to pleasure, and told him that his orations did smell of the lamp:' 'Indeed,' said Demosthenes, 'there is a great difference between the things that you and I do by lamp-light.', So 15 as no man need doubt that learning will expulse business; but rather it will keep and defend the possession of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which otherwise at unawares may enter to the prejudice of both.

Again, for that other conceit that learning should 20 undermine the reverence of laws and government, it is

assuredly a mere depravation and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For to say that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may 25 tread surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, generous, maniable, and pliant to government, whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth 30 clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.

And as to the judgment of Cato the Censor, he was well punished for his blasphemy against learning, in the 35 same kind wherein he offended, for when he was past

GOOD GOVERNMENT AND LEARNING AGREE. 17

threescore years old he was taken with an extreme desire
to go to school again, and to learn the Greek tongue, to
the end to peruse the Greek authors; which doth well
demonstrate that his former censure of the Grecian learn-
ing was rather an affected gravity than according to the 5
inward sense of his own opinion. And as for Virgil's
verses, though it pleased him to brave the world in taking.
to the Romans the art of empire, and leaving to others
the arts of subjects; yet so much is manifest, that the
Romans never ascended to that height of empire till the 10
time they had ascended to the height of other arts. For
in the time of the two first Cæsars, which had the art of
government in greatest perfection, there lived the best
poet, Virgilius Maro; the best historiographer, Titus
Livius; the best antiquary, Marcus Varro; and the best 15
or second orator, Marcus Cicero, that to the memory of
man are known. As for the accusation of Socrates, the
time must be remembered when it was prosecuted :
which was under the Thirty Tyrants, the most base,
bloody, and envious persons that have governed; which 20
revolution of state was no sooner over, but Socrates,
whom they had made a person criminal, was made a per-
son heroical, and his memory accumulate with honors
divine and human; and those discourses of his, which
were then termed corrupting of manners, were after
acknowledged for sovran medicines of the mind and man-
ners, and so have been received ever since till this day.
Let this therefore serve for answer to politics, which in
their humorous severity or in their feigned gravity have
presumed to throw imputations upon learning; which 30
redargution nevertheless save that we know not whether
our labors may extend to other ages were not needful
for the present, in regard of the love and reverence
towards learning which the example and countenance of
two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth and Your Maj- 35

25

esty, being as Castor and Pollux, shining stars,1 stars of excellent light and most benign influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority in our nation.

Now therefore we come to that third sort of discredit 5 or diminution of credit, that groweth unto learning from learned men themselves, which commonly cleaveth fastest. It is either from their fortune, or from their manners, or from the nature of their studies. For the first, it is not in their power; and the second is accidental; the 10 third only is proper to be handled. But because we are not in hand with true measure, but with popular estimation and conceit, it is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. The derogations therefore which grow to learning from the fortune or condition of learned men, 15 are either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of privateness of life and meanness of employments.

20

Concerning want, and that it is the case of learned men usually to begin with little, and not to grow rich so fast as other men by reason they convert not their labors chiefly to lucre and increase, - it were good to leave the common place in commendation of poverty to some friar to handle, to whom much was attributed by Machiavel in this point, when he said that the kingdom of the clergy had been long before at an end, if the reputation and 25 reverence towards the poverty of friars had not borne out the scandal of the superfluities and excesses of bishops and prelates.' So a man might say that the felicity and delicacy of princes and great persons had long since turned to rudeness and barbarism, if the poverty of learning had 30 not kept up civility and honor of life. But without any

such advantages, it is worthy the observation what a reverent and honored thing poverty of fortune was for some ages in the Roman state, which nevertheless was a state with

1 lucida sidera.

POVERTY THE FORTUNE OF VIRTUE.

there

19

out paradoxes. For we see what Titus Livius saith in his introduction: If affection for my subject does not deceive me, there was never any state in the world either greater or purer or richer in good examples; never any into which avarice and luxury made their way so late; never any in 5 which poverty and frugality were for so long a time held in so great honor.1 We see likewise, after that the state of Rome was not itself, but did degenerate, how that person that took upon him to be counsellor to Julius Cæsar after his victory, where to begin his restoration of the 10 state, maketh it of all points the most summary to take away the estimation of wealth: But these and all other evils will cease as soon as the worship of money ceases; which will come to pass when neither public offices, nor other things which the masses desire, shall be purchasable.215 To conclude this point, as it was truly said, that a blush is the color of virtue, though sometime it comes from vice; so it may be fitly said, that poverty is the fortune of virtue, though sometime it may proceed from misgovernment and accident. Surely Solomon hath pronounced it 20 both in censure, He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent, and in precept, 'Buy the truth, and sell it not;' and so of wisdom and knowledge; judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and not learning to be applied to means. And as for the privateness or 25 obscureness (as it may be in vulgar estimation accounted)

1 Cæterum aut me amor negotii suscepti fallit, aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam sera avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint; nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimonia honos fuerit.

2 Verum hæc et omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniæ desinent; si neque magistratus, neque alia vulgo cupienda, venalia erunt. 3 Rubor est virtutis color.

20

TEACHERS NOT TO BE SCORNED.

of life of contemplative men: it is a theme so common to extol a private life not taxed with sensuality and sloth, in comparison and to the disadvantage of a civil life, for safety, liberty, pleasure, and dignity, or at least freedom. 5 from indignity, as no man handleth it but handleth it well; such a consonancy it hath to men's conceits in the expressing, and to men's consents in the allowing. This only I will add, that learned men forgotten in states, and not living in the eyes of men, are like the images of CasIo sius and Brutus in the funeral of Junia; of which not being represented, as many others were, Tacitus saith, They glared through their absences.1

20

And for meanness of employment, that which is most traduced to contempt is that the government of youth 15 is commonly allotted to them; which age, because it is the age of least authority, it is transferred to the disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But how unjust this traducement is if you will reduce things from popularity of opinion to measure of reason may appear in that we see men are more curious what they put into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned, and what mould they lay about a young plant than about a plant corroborate; so as the weakest terms and times of all things 25 use to have the best applications and helps. And will you hearken to the Hebrew Rabbins ? Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; say they, youth is the worthier age, for that visions are nearer apparitions of God than dreams. And let it be 30 noted that howsoever the conditions of life of pedants hath been scorned upon theatres, as the ape of tyranny, and that the modern looseness or negligence hath taken no due regard to the choice of schoolmasters and tutors;

1 Eo ipso præfulgebant, quod non visebantur.