THE FIRST BOOK. 49 



morality, which do preserve them and refrain them from all 

 ruinous and peremptory errors and excesses ; whispering 

 evermore in their ears, when counsellors and servants stand 

 mute and silent. And senators or counsellors likewise, 

 which be learned, do proceed upon more safe and substantial 

 principles, than counsellors which are only men of experience ; 

 the one sort keeping dangers afar off, whereas the other dis 

 cover them not till they come near hand, and then trust to 

 the agility of their wit to ward off or avoid them. 



Which felicity of times under learned princes, (to keep 10 

 still the law of brevity, by using the most eminent and 

 selected examples,) doth best appear in the age which passed 

 from the death of Domitian the emperor until the reign of 

 Commodus ; comprehending a succession of six princes, all 

 learned, or singular favourers and advancers of learning ; 

 which age, for temporal respects, was the most happy and 

 flourishing that ever the Roman empire (which then was a 

 model of the world) enjoyed : a matter revealed and pre 

 figured unto Domitian in a dream the night before he was 

 slain ; for he thought there was grown behind upon his 20 

 shoulders a neck and a head of gold : which came accordingly 

 to pass in those golden times which succeeded : of which 

 princes we will make some commemoration ; wherein although 

 the matter will be vulgar, and may be thought fitter for a 

 declamation than agreeable to a treatise infolded as this is, 

 yet because it is pertinent to the point in hand, Neque semper 

 arcum tendit Apollo, \_A nd Apollo is not always stretching his 

 bow,] and to name them only were too naked and cursory, 

 I will not omit it altogether. The first was Nerva ; the 

 excellent temper of whose government is by a glance in 30 

 Cornelius Tacitus touched to the life : Postquam divus Nerva 

 res olim insociabiles miscuissct, imperium et libertatem : [ When 

 the divine Nerva had reconciled things which did not go to 

 gether before, namely, authority and liberty.] And in token 

 of his learning, the last act of his short reign, left to memory, 

 was a missive to his adopted son Trajan, proceeding upon 



D 



