The First Book 25 



which though it hath large flourishes, yet 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 inven-( 

 tion, to fall in love with them is all one as to fall in love 

 with a picture. 



4. But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be 

 condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of Philo • 

 sophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For 

 hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, 

 Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree ; and hereof like- 

 wise there is great use : for surely, to the severe inquisition 

 of truth and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some 

 hindrance ; because it is too early satisfactory to the mind 

 of man, and quencheth the desire of further search, before 

 we come to a just period. But then if a man be to have any 

 use of such knowledge in civil occasions, of conference, 

 counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the hke; then shall he 

 find it prepared to his hands in those authors which write in 

 that manner. But the excess of this is so justly contemp- 

 tible that as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, 

 Venus' minion, in a temple, said in disdain. Nil sacri es ; ^ 

 Bo there is none of Hercules' followers in learning, that is, 

 the more severe and laborious sort of inquirers into truth, 

 but will despise those delicacies and affectations, as indeed 

 capable of no divineness. And thus much of the first 

 disease or distemper of learning. 



5. The second which foUoweth is in nature worse than 

 the former : for as substance of matter is better than beauty 

 of words, so contrariwise vain matter is worse than vain 

 words: wherein it seemeth the reprehension of St. Paul was 

 not only proper for those times, but prophetical for the 

 times following; and not only respective to divinity, but 

 extensive to all knowledge ; Devita prof anas vocum novitates, 

 et opposiiiones falsi nominis scienticB.^ For he assigneth two 

 marks and badges of suspected and falsified science: the 

 one, the novelty and strangeness of terms; the other, the 

 strictness of positions, which of necessity doth induce oppo- 

 sitions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as 



• Ovid, Metam. x. 243. 



• Theocr. v. 2 (schol.) or Erasmi Adag. 



• I Tim. vi. 20. 



