CHAP. II.] PRAISE OP THE IKON BASILICON. 279 



men ? But for treatises upon this subject, -which have no 

 tincture of experience, and are only drawn from general and 

 scholastic knowledge, they commonly prove empty and use 

 less performances; for though a bystander may sometimes 

 see what escaped the player, and although it be a kind of 

 proverb, more bold and true with regard to prince and 

 people, &quot; that a spectator in the valley takes the best view 

 of a mountain,&quot; yet it were greatly to be wished that none 

 but the most experienced men would write upon subjects of 

 this kind ; for tho contemplations of speculative men in 

 active matters appear no better to those who have been con 

 versant in business than the dissertations of Phormio upon 

 war appeared to Hannibal, who esteemed them but as 

 dreams and dotage. One fault, however, dwells with such 

 as write upon things belonging to their own office or art, 

 viz., that they hold no mean in recommending and extolling 

 them. 



In speaking of books of this kind, it would indeed be 

 sacrilege in me to omit mention of your Majesty s excellent 

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

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

 ot 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 expe 

 diency 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 a*, 

 well as rulers of their people, Nor can I forget that memor- 



