matter of doubtful consequence if states be managed by 
empiric statesmen, not well mingled with men grounded 
in learning. But contrariwise, it is almost without instance 
_ contradictory that ever any government was disastrous that PY 
was in the hands of learned governors. For howsoever 
it hath been ordinary with politique men to extenuate and 
disable learned men by the names of pedantes ; yet in the 
records of time it appeareth in many particulars that the 
governments of princes in minority (notwithstanding the 
infinite disadvantage of that kind of state) have never- 
| theless excelled the government of princes of mature age, 
even for that reason which they seek to traduce, which is, 
that by that occasion the state hath been in the hands of 
| pedantes : for so was the state of Rome for the first five 
years, which are so much magnified, during the minority 
of Nero, in the hands of Seneca a pedanii': so it was again, 
for ten years’ space or more, during the minority of Gor- 
dianus the younger, with great applause and contentation 
in the hands of Misitheus a pedanti' : so was it before that, 
in the minority of Alexander Severus, in like happiness, in 
hands not much unlike, by reason of the rule of the 
women, who were aided by the teachers and preceptors. 
Nay, let a man look into the government of the bishops 
of Rome, as by name, into the government of Pius 
Quintus and Sextus Quintus in our times, who were both 
at their entrance esteemed but as pedantical friars, and he 
shall find that such popes do greater things, and proceed 
upon truer principles of estate, than those which have 
ascended to the papacy from an education and breeding 
in affairs of estate and courts of princes; for although 
men bred in learning are perhaps to seek in points of 
convenience and accommodating for the present, which 
the Italians call ragiont di sta/o, whereof the same Pius 
