THE SECOND BOOK 155 



way between London and York. The better sort of 

 rules have been not unfitly compared to glasses of steel 

 unpolished, where you may see the images of things, 

 but first they must be filed : so the rules will help, if 

 they be laboured and poUshed by practice, j)^ produc. 

 But how crystalline they may be made at tiont axio- 

 the first, and how far forth they may be '«^'«™' 

 polished aforehand is the question ; the inquiry whereof 

 seemeth to me deficient. 



14. There hath been also laboured and put in prac- 

 tice a method, which is not a lawful method, but a 

 method of imposture ; which is, to deliver knowledges 

 in such manner, as men may speedily come to make 

 a show of learning who have it not. Such was the tra- 

 vail of Raymundus Lulhus, in making that art which 

 bears his name : not unhke to some books of tjrpocosmy, 

 which have been made since ; being nothing but a mass 

 of words of all arts, to give men countenance, that 

 those which use the terms might be thought to under- 

 stand the art ; which collections are much Uke a fripper's 

 or broker's shop, that hath ends of everything, but 

 nothing of worth. 



XVIII. 1. Now we descend to that part which con- 

 cerneth the illustration of tradition, comprehended in 

 that science which we call rhetoric, or art of eloquence ; 

 a science excellent, and excellently well laboured. For 

 although in true value it is inferior to wisdom, as it is 

 said by God to Moses, when he disabled himself for 

 want of this faculty, ' Aaron shall be thy speaker, and 

 thou shalt be to him as God ' ; yet with people it is the 

 more mighty : for so Salomon saith, ' Sapiens corde 

 appellabitur prudens, seddulcis eloquio majora reperiet ' ; 

 signifying that profoundness of wisdom will help a man 

 to a name or admiration, but that it is eloquence that 

 prevaileth in an active life. And as to the labouring of 

 it, the emulation of Aristotle with the rhetoricians of 

 his time, and the experience of Cicero, hath made them 

 in their works of rhetorics exceed themselves. Again, 

 the excellency of examples of eloquence in the orations 

 of Demosthenes and Cicero, added to the perfection of 



