THE FIRST BOOK. 15 



and unworthily ambitious to meddle in things that may be 

 better done by others :) and then the question is, but how 

 those spaces and times of leisure shall be filled and spent ; 

 whether in pleasures or in studies ; as was well answered by 

 Demosthenes to his adversary ^Eschines, that was a man 

 given to pleasure, and told him, That his orations did smell of 

 the lamp : Indeed, said Demosthenes, there is great difference 

 between the things that you and I do by lamp-light. So as no 

 man need doubt that learning will expulse business, but 

 rather it will keep and defend the possession of the mind 10 

 against idleness and pleasure, which otherwise at unawares 

 may enter to the prejudice of both. 



Again, for that other conceit, that learning should 

 undermine the reverence of laws and government, it is 

 assuredly a mere depravation and calumny, without all 

 shadow of truth. For to say, that a blind custom of obedi 

 ence should be a surer obligation than duty taught and under 

 stood ; it is to affirm, that a blind man may tread surer 

 by a guide than a seeing man can by a light. And it is 

 without all controversy, that learning doth make the minds 20 

 of men gentle, generous, maniable, and pliant to government ; 

 whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwart, and muti 

 nous : and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, 

 considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned 

 times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and \, 

 changes. 



And as to the judgment of Cato, the Censor, he was 

 well punished for his blasphemy against learning, in the 

 same kind wherein he offended ; for when he was past 

 threescore years old, he was taken with an extreme desire 30 

 to go to school again, and to learn the Greek tongue, to 

 the end to peruse the Greek authors ; which doth well 

 demonstrate, that his former censure of the Grecian learning 

 was rather an affected gravity, than according to the in 

 ward sense of his own opinion. And as for Virgil's verses, 

 though it pleased him to brave the world in taking to the 



