92 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



of people (which, is the mother of rebellion) doth bring 

 forth libels and slanders, and taxations of the states, 

 which is of the same kind with rebellion, but more 

 feminine. So in the fable that the rest of the gods 

 having conspired to bind Jupiter, Pallas called Briareus 

 with his hundred hands to his aid: expounded that 

 monarchies need not fear any curbing of their absolute 

 ness by mighty subjects, as long as by wisdom they 

 keep the hearts of the people, who will be sure to come 

 in on their side. So in the fable that Achilles was 

 brought up under Chiron the centaur, who was part 

 a man and part a beast, expounded ingeniously but 

 corruptly by Machiavel, that it belongeth to the educa 

 tion and discipline of princes to know as well how to 

 play the part of the lion in violence, and the fox in 

 guile, as of the man in virtue and justice. Neverthe 

 less, in many the like encounters, I do rather think 

 that the fable was first, and the exposition devised, 

 than that the moral was first, and thereupon the fable 

 framed. For I find it was an ancient vanity in Chry- 

 sippus, that troubled himself with great contention to 

 fasten the assertions of the Stoics upon the fictions of 

 the ancient poets ; but yet that all the fables and 

 fictions of the poets were but pleasure and not figure, 

 I interpose no opinion. Surely of those poets which 

 are now extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding 

 he was made a kind of scripture by the later schools of 

 the Grecians), yet I should without any difficulty pro 

 nounce that his fables had no such inwardness in his 

 own meaning. But what they might have upon a 

 more original tradition, is not easy to affirm ; for he 

 was not the inventor of many of them. 



5. In this third part of learning, which is poesy, 

 I can report no deficience. For being as a plant that 

 cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, 

 it hath sprung up and spread abroad more than any 

 other kind. But to ascribe unto it that which is due 

 for the expressing of affections, passions, corruptions, 

 and customs, we are beholding to poets more than to 

 the philosophers works ; and for wit and eloquence, 



