n.,.] 



THE FIRST BOOK. 



matter of doubtful consequence if states be manag 

 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! 

 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 

 pedanles: forso was the state of Rome for the first five^ 

 year s, whicrTare so much magnified, during the minority 

 of NcTcrffl-tfo^iiili^f- Se^ 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^JieUL 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 greatcrthings, and proceed 

 upon truer principles of estate, than those wnich have&quot; 

 ascended to the papacy from an education and breeding 

 state and courts of princes ; for although 

 learning are perhaps to seek in points of 

 convenience and accommodating for the present, which 

 the Italians call ragioni di stalo, whereof the same Pius 



