ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 319 



work on the duty of a king. This work incloses the leading 

 treasures of divinity, politics, and ethics, besides a sprink 

 ling of all other arts; and I am not afraid to pronounce it 

 one of the soundest and most profitable works I have ever 

 read. It does not swell with the heat of invention, or flag 

 with the coldness of negligence. The author is nowhere 

 seized with that dizziness which confuses his sight of the 

 main subject, and consequently avoids those digressions 

 which, by a sort of circuitous method, descants on matter 

 foreign to the purpose. Neither are its pages disfigured with 

 the arts of rhetorical perfumes and paintings, designed rather 

 to please the reader than to corroborate the argument. But 

 they contain life and spirit, as well as solidity and bulk, 

 containing excellent precepts, adapted as well to theoretical 

 truth as to the expediency of use and action. The work is 

 also entirely exempt from that vice even more censured, 

 and which, if it were tolerable, it were so in kings, and in 

 works on regal majesty, viz., that it does not exaggerate the 

 privileges of the crown or invidiously exalt their power. 

 For your Majesty has not described a king of Persia or 

 Assyria, shining forth in all their pomp and glory, but 

 a Moses and a David, pastors as well as rulers of their 

 people. Nor can I forget that memorable saying which 

 your Majesty delivered on an important point of judica 

 ture That kings rule by the laws of their kingdoms, as 

 God by the laws of nature, and ought as rarely to exercise 

 their prerogative, which transcends law, as God exercises 

 his power of working miracles. And in your Majesty s 

 other book on a free monarchy, you give all men to under 

 stand that your Majesty knows and comprehends the pleni 

 tude of the regal power, as well as its limits; I, therefore, 

 have not shrunk from citing this book as one of the best 

 treatises ever published upon particular and respective 

 duties. I can also assure your Majesty, that had the book 

 been a thousand years in existence it would not have lost 

 any of the praises I have bestowed upon it; nor am I pre 

 scribed by the adage which forbids praise in presence; since 



