BOOK I.] AMLABLE INGENUOUSNESS OF LEARNED MEN. 41 



barons, has a good moral ; for men ought not, by cunning 

 and studied observations, to penetrate and search into the 

 hearts of kings, which the Scripture declares inscrutable.' 



Another fault noted in learned men is, " That they ofcen 

 fail in point of discretion and decency of behaviour, and 

 commit errors in ordinary actions, whence vulgar capacities 

 judge of them in greater matters by what they find them in 

 small." But this consequence often deceives; for we may 

 here justly apply the saying of Themistocles, who being 

 asked to touch a lute, replied, " He could not fiddle, but he 

 could make a little village a great city."'* Accordingly many 

 may be well skilled in government and policy, who are 

 defective in little punctilios. So Plato compared his master 

 Socrates to the shop-pots of apothecaries painted on the out- 

 side with apes and owls and antiques, bub contained within 

 sovereign and precious remedies. '^ 



But we have nothing to offer in excuse of those imworthy 

 practices, whereby some professors have debased both them- 

 selves and learning, as the trencher philosophers, who, in the 

 decline of the Roman state, were but a kind of solemn para- 

 sites. Lucian makes merry -with this kind of gentry, in the 

 person of a philosopher riding in a coach with a great lady, 

 who would needs have him carry her lapdog, which he doing 

 with an awkward officiousness, the page said, " He feared 

 the Stoic would turn Cynic."y But above all, the gross flat- 

 tery wherein many abuse their wit, by turning Hecuba into 

 Hellena, and Faustina into Lucretia, has most diminished 

 the value and esteem of learning.^ Neither is the modern 

 practice of dedications commendable; for books should have 

 no patrons but truth and reason. And the ancient custom 

 was, to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or 

 if to kings and great persons, it was to such as the subject 

 suited. These and the like measures, therefore, deserve 



* Prov. XXV. *» Cicero, Tuscul. Qucsst. i. 2 ; Plutarch, Themistocles. 



* Conv. iii. 215; and cf. Xen. Syrap. v. 7. 



y Lucian de Merc. Cond. 33, 34. The raillery couched under the 

 word cynic will become more evident if the reader will recollect the 

 word is derived from kvvoq, the Greek name for dog. Those philoso- 

 phers were called Cynics who, like Diogenes, rather barked than 

 declaimed against the vices and the manners of their age. Ed. 



» Pu Bartas ^tbulian's Rescue, b. y, tfj^nslatefi by SyhssWr* 



