rr en “THE SECOND BOOK. Sr 
neglect, in those which are governors in universities, 
of consultation, and in princes or superior persons, of 
«visitation : to enter into account and consideration, whe- 
ther the readings, exercises, and other customs apper- 
taining unto learning, anciently begun and since conti- 
nued, be well instituted or no; and thereupon to ground 
an amendment or reformation in that which shall be 
found inconvenient. For it is one of your Majesty’s 
own most wise and princely maxims, Zhaf in all usages 
and precedents, the times be considered wherein they first 
began ; which tf they were weak or ignorant, it derogateth 
from the authority of the usage, and leaveth it for suspect. 
And therefore inasmuch as most of the usages and orders 
of the universities were derived from more obscure times, 
it is the more requisite they be re-examined. In this 
kind I will give an instance or two, for example sake, 
of things that are the most obvious and familiar. The 
one is a matter, which though it be ancient and general, 
yet I hold to be an error; which is, that scholars in 
universities come too soon and too unripe to logic 
and rhetoric, arts fitter for graduates than children and 
novices. For these two, rightly taken, are the gravest of 
sciences, being the arts of arts; the one for judgement, 
the other for ornament. And they be the rules and 
directions how to set forth and dispose matter: and 
therefore for minds empty and unfraught with matter, 
and which have not gathered that which Cicero calleth 
sylva and supellex, stuff and variety, to begin with those 
arts (as if one should learn to weigh, or to measure, or to 
paint the wind) doth work but this effect, that the wisdom 
of those arts, which is great and universal, is almost made 
contemptible, and is degenerate into childish sophistry 
and ridiculous affectation. And further, the untimely 
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