THE FIRST BOOK. 



affectionate study of eloquence and copia of speech, which 

 then began to flourish. This grew speedily to an excess ; for 

 men began to hunt more after words than matter ; more 

 after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean 

 composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the 

 clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with 

 tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of 

 subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of 

 judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of 

 Osorius, the Portugal bishop, to be in price. Then did 10 

 Sturmius spend such infinite and curious pains upon Cicero 

 the Orator, and Hermogenes the Rhetorician, besides his own 

 books of Periods, and Imitation, and the like. Then did Car 

 of Cambridge, and^^cLaiUyjyith their lectures and writings, 

 almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure all young 

 men that were studious, unto that delicate and polished kind 

 of learning. Then did Erasmus take occasion to make the 

 scoffing echo : Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone ; [I 

 have spent ten years in reading Cicero ;] and the echo answered 

 in Greek, "Oe, Asine, [Thou donkey.] Then grew the learning 20 

 of the Schoolmen to be utterly despised as barbarous. In 

 sum, the whole indication and bent of those times was rather 

 towards copia than weight. 



Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, wheni 

 men study words, and not matter ; whereof, though I have I 

 represented an example of late times, yet it hath been, and 

 will be, Secundum majus et minus [in a greater or less degree] 

 in all time. And how is it possible but this should have an 

 operation to discredit learning, even with vulgar capacities, 

 when they see learned men's works like the first letter of a 30 

 patent, or limned book ; which though it hath large flourishes, 

 yet it is but a letter. It seems to me that Pygmalion's frenzy 

 is a good emblem or portraiture of this vanity : for words are 

 but the images of matter ; and except they have life of reason 

 and invention, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in 

 love with a picture. 



