24 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



friendship it is want of integrity, so towards princes 

 or superiors is want of duty. For the custom of the 

 Levant, which is that subjects do forbear to gaze or 

 fix their eyes upon princes, is in the outward ceremony 

 barbarous, but the moral is good : for men ought not 

 by cunning and bent observations to pierce and pene 

 trate into the hearts of kings, which the scripture hath 

 declared to be inscrutable. 



8. There is yet another fault (with which I will con 

 clude this part) which is often noted in learned men, 

 that they do many times fail to observe decency and 

 discretion in their behaviour and carriage, and commit 

 errors in small and ordinary points of action, so as the 

 vulgar sort of capacities do make a judgement of them 

 in greater matters by that which they find wanting 

 in them in smaller. But this consequence doth oft 

 deceive men, for which I do refer them over to that 

 which was said by Themistocles, arrogantly and un 

 civilly being applied to himself out of his own mouth, 

 but, being applied to the general state of this question, 

 pertinently and justly; when being invited to touch 

 a lute he said He could not fiddle, but he could make 

 a small town a great state. So no doubt many may 

 be well seen in the passages of government and policy, 

 which are to seek in little and punctual occasions. 

 I refer them also to that which Plato said of his master 

 Socrates, whom he compared to the gallipots of apothe 

 caries, which on the outside had apes and owls and 

 antiques but contained within sovereign and precious 

 liquors and confections ; acknowledging that to an 

 external report he was not without superficial levities 

 and deformities, but was inwardly replenished with 

 excellent virtues and powers. And so much touching 

 the point of manners of learned men. 



9. But in the mean time I have no purpose to give 

 allowance to some conditions and courses base and 

 unworthy, wherein divers professors of learning have 

 wronged themselves and gone too far ; such as were 

 those trencher philosophers which in the later age of 

 the Roman state were usually in the houses of great 



