THE FIRST BOOK. 27 



cause, which is no inability, but a rejection upon choice and 

 udgment. For the honest and just bounds of observation by 

 me person upon another extend no further but to understand 

 lim sufficiently, whereby not to give him offence, or whereby 

 ;o be able to give him faithful counsel, or whereby to stand 

 upon reasonable guard and caution in respect of a man s self. 

 But to be speculative into another man to the end to know /^ 

 low to work him, or wind him, or govern him, proceedeth 

 r rom a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and 

 .ngenuous ; which as in friendship it is want of integrity, so 

 ;owards princes or superiors is want of duty. For the custom . 

 of the Levant, which is that subjects do forbear to gaze or fix 

 bheir eyes upon princes, is in the outward ceremony barbarous, 

 but the moral is good ; for men ought not, by cunning and 

 bent observations, to pierce and penetrate into the aearts of 

 kings, which. .th^.^riptuj^Jia^-tee}ftf^4o^eTir5CrTitable. - 

 &quot;~p3y &quot;There is yet another fault (with which I will conclude 

 this part) which is often noted in learned men, that they do 

 many times fail to observe decency and discretion in their 

 behaviour and carriage, and commit errors in small and or 

 dinary points of action, so as the vulgar sort of capacities do 

 make a judgment of them in greater matters by that which 

 they find wanting in them in smaller. But this consequence 

 doth oft deceive men, for which I do refer them over to 

 that which was said by Themistocles, arrogantly and uncivilly 

 being applied to himself out of his own mouth, but, being 

 applied to the general state of this question, pertinently and 

 justly, when, being invited to touch a lute, he said, &quot;He 

 could not fiddle, but he could make a small town a great 

 state.&quot; So no doubt many may be well seen in the passages of 

 government and policy which are to seek in little and punctual 

 occasions. I refer them also to that which Plato said of his 

 master Socrates, whom he compared to the gallipots of apothe 

 caries, which on the outside had apes and owls and antiques, 

 but contained within sovereign and precious liquors and con 

 fections ; acknowledging that, to an external report, he was 

 not without superficial levities and deformities, but was in 

 wardly replenished with excellent virtues and powers. And 

 | so much touching the point of manners of learned men. 

 I (9) But in the meantime I have no purpose to give allowance 

 I to some conditions and courses base and unworthy, wherein 

 1 livers professors of learning have wronged themselves and 

 | ?one too far ; such as were those trencher philosophers which 

 I in the later age of the Roman state were usually in the houses 

 I of great persons, being little better than solemn parasites, of 



