104 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [iV. 4. 



people, who will be sure to come in on their side. So in 

 the fable that Achilles was brought up under Chiron the 

 centaur, who was part a man and part a beast, expounded 

 ingeniously but corruptly by Machiavel, that it belongeth 

 to the education and discipline of princes to know as 

 well how to play the part of the lion in violence, and the 

 fox in guile, as of the man in virtue and justice. Never 

 theless, in many the like encounters, I do rather think 

 that the fable was first, and the exposition devised, than 

 that the moral was first, and thereupon the fable framed. 

 For I find it was an ancient vanity in Chrysippus, that 

 troubled himself with great contention to fasten the 

 assertions of the Stoics upon the fictions of the ancient 

 poets ; but yet that all the fables and fictions of the poets 

 were but pleasure and not figure, I interpose no opinion. 

 Surely of those poets which are now extant, even Homer 

 himself (notwithstanding he was made a kind of scrip 

 ture by the later schools of the Grecians), yet I should 

 without any difficulty pronounce that his fables had 

 no such inwardness in his own meaning. But what 

 they might have upon a more original tradition, is not 

 easy to affirm ; for he was not the inventor of many of 

 them. 



5. In this third part of learning, which is poesy, I can 

 report no deficience. For being as a plant that cometh 

 of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath 

 sprung up and spread abroad more than any other kind. 

 But to ascribe unto it that which is due, for the expressing 

 of affections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are 

 beholding to poets more than to the philosophers works; 

 and for wit and eloquence, not much less than to orators 

 harangues. But it is not good to stay too long in the 

 theatre. Let us now pass on to the judicial place or palace 



