42 LETTERS FROM STEPHENS. 



see, before any such occasion be offered, not to change my 

 intentions with my bishoprick. 



It is true that those ancients, Cicero, Demosthenes, and 

 Plinius Secundus, have preserved their orations (the heads 

 and effects of them at least) and their epistles ; and I have 

 ever been of opinion, that those two pieces, are the prin 

 cipal pieces of our antiquities. Those orations discovering 

 the form of administering justice, and the letters the car 

 riage of the affairs in those times. For our histories (or 

 rather lives of men) borrow as much from the affections 

 and phantasies of the writers, as from the truth itself, and 

 are for the most of them built together upon unwritten 

 relations and traditions. But letters written c re nata, and 

 bearing a synchronism or equality of time cum rebus gestis, 

 have no other fault, than that which was imputed unto 

 Virgil, nihil peccat nisi, quod nihil peccet, they speak the 

 truth too plainly, and cast too glaring a light for that age, 

 wherein they were, or are written. 



Your lordship doth most worthily, therefore, in preserving 

 those two pieces, amongst the rest of those matchless mo 

 numents you shall leave behind you ; considering that, as 

 one age hath not bred your experience, so is it not fit it 

 should be confined to one age, and not imparted to the 

 times to come. For my part therein, I do embrace the 

 honour with all thankfulness, and the trust imposed upon 

 me, with all religion and devotion. For those two lectures 

 in natural philosophy, and the sciences woven and involved 

 with the same ; it is a great and a noble foundation, both 

 for the use and the salary, and a foot that will teach the 

 age to come, to guess in part at the greatness of that her 

 culean mind which gave them their existence. Only your 

 lordship may be advised for the seats of this foundation. 

 The two universities are the two eyes of this land, and 

 fittest to contemplate the lustre of this bounty; these two 

 lectures are as the two apples of these eyes. An apple 

 when it is single is an ornament, when double a pearl, or a 

 blemish in the eye. Your lordship may therefore inform 

 yourself if one Sidley, of Kent, hath not already founded in 

 Oxford a lecture of this nature and condition. But if 

 Oxford in this kind be an Argus, I am sure poor Cambridge 

 is a right Polyphemus, it hath but one eye, and that not so 

 steadily or artificially placed, but bonum est facile sui diffu- 

 sivum; your lordship being so full of goodness, will quickly 

 find an object to pour it on. That which made me say 



