LIFE OF BACON. Vll 



heads, conduits, cisterns, and pools, which men have ac 

 customed likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplish 

 ments of magnificence and state, as well as of use and 

 necessity ; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether 

 it descend from divine inspiration, or spring from human 

 sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, if it were 

 not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and places 

 appointed ; as universities, colleges, and schools, for the 

 receipt and comforting of the same. All tending to quiet 

 ness and privateness of life, and discharge of cares and 

 troubles ; much like the stations which Virgil prescribeth 

 for the hiving of bees : 



Principle sedes apibus statioque petenda, 

 Quo neque sit ventis aditus, etc. 



Such were his imaginations of the tranquillity and occu 

 pations in our universities. 



He could not long have resided in Cambridge before he 

 must have discovered his erroneous notions of the mighty 

 living, and of the pursuits in which they were engaged. 

 Instead of students ready at all times to acquire any sort 

 of knowledge, he found himself &quot; amidst men of sharp and 

 strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of 

 reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few 

 authors, chiefly Aristotle their dictator, as their persons 

 were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges ; and 

 knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of 

 no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, 

 spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of 

 thread and work, but of no substance or profit.&quot; (a) 



(a) See the Advancement of Learning, under Contentious Learning. See 

 Gibbon s Memoirs. See vol. viii. London Magazine, page 509. Let him 

 who is fond of indulging in a dream-like existence go to Oxford, and 

 stay there ; let him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all 

 aspects, with its mental twilight tempering the glare of noontide, or mel- 



