ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 53 



on the outside with apes and owls and antiques, but con 

 taining within sovereign and precious remedies. 44 



But we have nothing to offer in excuse of those un 

 worthy practices, whereby some professors have debased 

 both themselves and learning, as the trencher philosophers, 

 who, in the decline of the Koman State, were but a kind 

 of solemn parasites. Lucian makes merry with this kind 

 of gentry, in the person of a philosopher riding in a coach 

 with a great lady, who would needs have him carry her 

 lapdog, which he doing with an awkward officiousness, 

 the page said, &quot;He feared the Stoic would turn Cynic.&quot; 46 

 But above all, the gross flattery wherein many abuse their 

 wit, by turning Hecuba into Hellena, and Faustina into 

 Lucretia, has most diminished the value and esteem of 

 learning. 48 Neither is the modern practice of dedications 

 commendable ; for books should have no patrons but truth 

 and reason. And the ancient custom was, to dedicate them 

 only to private and equal friends, or if to kings and great 

 persons, it was to such as the subject suited. These and 

 the like measures, therefore, deserve rather to be censured 

 than defended. Yet the submission of learned men to 

 those in power cannot be condemned. Diogenes, to one 

 who asked him &quot;How it happened that philosophers fol 

 lowed the rich, and not the rich the philosophers ? an 

 swered, &quot;Because the philosophers know what they want, 

 but the rich do not.&quot; 47 And of the like nature was the 

 answer of Aristippus, who having a petition to Dionysius, 

 and no ear being given him, fell down at his feet, where 

 upon Dionysius gave him the hearing, and granted the suit; 

 but when afterward Aristippus was reproved for offering 

 such an indignity to philosophy as to fall at a tyrant s feet, 



44 Conv. iii. 215; and cf. Xen. Symp. v. 7. 



45 Lucian de Merc. Cond. 33, 34. The raillery couched under the word 

 cynic will become more evident if the reader will recollect the word is derived 

 from KVI/OS, the Greek name for dog. Those philosophers were called Cynics 

 who, like Diogenes, rather barked than declaimed against the vices and the 

 manners of their age. Ed. 



46 Du Bartas Bethulian s Rescue, b. v. translated by Sylvester. 



47 Laert. Life Diog. 



