18 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. *[1. 9. 
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 go- 
verned ; which revolution of state was no sooner over, 
but Socrates, whom they had made a person criminal, 
was made a person heroical, and his memory accumulate 
with honours divine and human; and those discourses of 
his which were then termed corrupting of manners, were 
after acknowledged for sovereign medicines of the mind 
and manners, and so have been received ever since till 
this day. Let this therefore serve for answer to 
politiques, which in their humorous severity, or in their 
feigned gravity, have presumed to throw imputations 
upon learning; which redargution nevertheless (save that 
we know not whether our labours 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 Majesty, being as Castor and Pollux, 
lucida sidera, stars of excellent light and most benign 
influence, hath wrought in all men of place and authority 
in our nation. “cite 
III. 1. Now therefore we come to that third sort of 
discredit or diminution of credit that groweth unto 
learning from learned..men__themselves,..which~ com- 
monly cleaveth fastest: it is either from their fortune, 
or from their manners, ‘or_ fromthe “nattire of their 
studies. For the first, it is not in theif power and the 
second is accidental; the 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 
