4 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



at those your virtues and faculties, which the Philo- 

 sophers call intellectual ; the largeness of your capacity, 

 the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your 

 apprehension, the penetration of your judgement, and 

 the facility and order of your elocution : and I have 

 often thought, that of all the persons living that I have 

 known, your Majesty were the best instance to make 

 a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge is but 

 remembrance, and that the mind of man by nature 

 knoweth all things, and hath but her own native and 

 original notions (which by the strangeness and dark- 

 ness of this tabernacle of the body are sequestered) 

 again revived and restored : such a light of nature 

 I have observed in your Majesty, and such a readiness 

 to take flame and blaze from the least occasion pre- 

 sented, or the least spark of another's knowledge 

 delivered. And as the Scripture saith of the wisest 

 king, ' That his heart was as the sands of the sea ' ; 

 which though it be one of the largest bodies, yet it 

 consisteth of the smallest and finest portions ; so hath 

 God given your Majesty a composition of understand- 

 ing admirable, being able to compass and comprehend 

 the greatest matters, and nevertheless to touch and 

 apprehend the least ; whereas it should seem an 

 impossibility in nature, for the same instrument , to 

 make itself fit for great and small works. And for 

 your gift of speech, I call to mind what Cornelius 

 Tacitus saith of Augustus Caesar : ' Augusto pro- 

 fluens, et quae principem deceret, eloquentia fuit.' 

 For if we note it well, speech that is uttered with 

 labour and difficulty, or speech that savoureth of the 

 affectation of art and precepts, or speech that is framed 

 after the imitation of some pattern of eloquence, 

 though never so excellent ; all this hath somewhat 

 servile, and holding of the subject. But your Majesty's 

 manner of speech is indeed prince-like, flowing as 

 from a fountain, and yet streaming and branching 

 itself into nature's order, full of facility and felicity, 

 imitating none, and inimitable by any. And as in 

 your civil estate there appeareth to be an emulation 



