18 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



As for the accusation of Socrates, the time must be 

 remembered when it was prosecuted ; which was under 

 the Thirty Tyrants, the most base, bloody, and envious 

 persons that have governed ; which revolution of state 

 was no sooner over, but Socrates, whom they had made 

 a person criminal, was made a person heroical, and his 

 memory accumulate with honours divine and human ; 

 and those discourses of his which were then termed 

 corrupting of manners, were after acknowledged for 

 sovereign medicines of the mind and manners, and so 

 have been received ever since till this day. Let this 

 therefore serve for answer to politiques, which in their 

 humorous severity, or in their feigned gravity, have 

 presumed to throw imputations upon learning ; which 

 redargution nevertheless (save that we know not whether 

 our labours may extend to other ages) were not needful 

 for the present, in regard of the love and reverence 

 towards learning, which the example and countenance 

 of two so learned princes, Queen Elizabeth and your 

 Majesty, being as Castor and Pollux, lucida sidera, 

 stars of excellent light and most benign influence, 

 hath wrought in all men of place and authority in 

 our nation. 



III. 1. Now therefore we come to that third sort 

 of discredit or diminution of credit that groweth unto 

 learning from learned men themselves, which com 

 monly cleaveth fastest : it is either from their fortune, 

 or from their manners, or from the nature of their 

 studies. For the first, it is not in their power ; and 

 the second is accidental ; the third only is proper to 

 be handled : but because we are not in hand with 

 true measure, but with popular estimation and conceit, 

 it is not amiss to speak somewhat of the two former. 

 The derogations therefore which grow to learning 

 from the fortune or condition of learned men, are 

 either in respect of scarcity of means, or in respect of 

 privateness of life and meanness of employments. 



2. Concerning want, and that it is the case of learned 

 men usually to begin with little, and not to grow rich 

 so fast as other men, by reason they convert not their 



