44 The Advancement of Learning 



only men of experience : the one sort keeping dangers afar 

 off, whereas the other discover them not till they come near 

 hand, and then trust to the agility of their wit to ward or 

 avoid them. 



4. Which felicity of times under learned princes, (to keep 

 still the law of brevity, by using the most eminent and 

 selected examples,) doth best appear in the age which 

 passed from the death of Domitian the emperor until the 

 reign of Commodus; comprehending a succession of six 

 princes, all learned, or singular favourers and advancers 

 of learning, which age for temporal respects, was the most 

 happy and flourishing that ever the Roman empire, (which 

 then was a model of the world,) enjoyed: a matter revealed 

 and prefigured unto Domitian in a dream the night before 

 he was slain ; for he thought there was grown behind upon 

 his shoulders a neck and head of gold : which came accord- 

 ingly to pass in those golden times which succeeded: of 

 which princes we will make some commemoration ; wherein 

 although the matter will be vulgar, and may be thought 

 fitter for a declamation than agreeable to a treatise infolded 

 as this is, yet because it is pertinent to the point in hand, 



Neque semper arcum 

 Tendit Apollo,* 



and to name them only were too naked and cursory, I will 

 not omit it altogether. The first was Nerva; the excellent 

 temper of whose government is by a glance in Cornelius 

 Tacitus touched to the life : Postquam divus Nerva res olim 

 insociabiles miscuisset, imperium et libertatem.^ And in 

 token of his learning, the last act of his short reign left to 

 memory, was a missive to his adopted son Trajan, proceed- 

 ing upon some inward discontent at the ingratitude of the 

 times, comprehended in a verse of Homer's: 



Telis, Phoebe, tuis lacrymas ulciscere nostras. • 



5. Trajan, who succeeded, was for his person not learned: 

 but if we will hearken to the speech of our Saviour, that 

 saith. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, 

 shall have a prophet's reward ;* he deserveth to be placed 



»Hor. Odes, ii. 10, 19. * Agric. Vit. c. 3. 



' TiVemi' Aaraol i^k Sdxpva ffoiffi ^fKeaffLV. Hom. //. a. 42. 

 Dionys. Epit. (Xiphilini), xii. 

 *Matt. X. 41. 



