28 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of 

 their works with tropes and figures, than after the 

 weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argu 

 ment, life of invention, or depth of judgement. Then 

 grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius, the 

 Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did Sturmius 

 spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero 

 the Orator, and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, besides 

 his own books of Periods and Imitation, and the like. 

 Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham with their 

 lectures and writings almost deify Cicero and Demos 

 thenes, and allure all young men that were studious 

 unto that delicate and polished kind of learning. Then 

 did Erasmus take occasion to make the scoffing echo, 

 Decem annos consurnpsi in legendo Cicerone ; and 

 the echo answered in Greek One, Asine. Then grew 

 the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised 

 as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and bent 

 of those times was rather towards copie than weight. 



3. Here therefore is the first distemper of learning, 

 when men study words and not matter ; whereof, 

 though I have represented an example of late times, 

 yet it hath been and will be secundum majus et minus 

 in all time. And how is it possible but this should 

 have an operation to discredit learning, even with 

 vulgar capacities, when they see learned men s works 

 like the first letter of a patent, or limned book ; which 

 though it hath large nourishes, yet it is but a letter ? 

 It seems to me that Pygmalion s frenzy is a good 

 emblem or portraiture of this vanity : for words are 

 but the images of matter ; and except they have life 

 of reason and invention, to fall in love with them is 

 all one as to fall in love with a picture. 



4. But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily 

 to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity 

 even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible 

 elocution. For hereof we have great examples in 

 Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also 

 in some degree ; and hereof likewise there is great use : 

 for surely, to the severe inquisition of truth and the 



