THE FIRST BOOK 183 



though sometime it come from vice ; so it may be fitly 

 said that pauper tas est virtutis for tuna, though sometime it 

 may proceed from misgovernment and accident. Surely 

 Solomon hath pronounced it, both in censure, Qui festinat 

 ad dimtias non erit insons, and in precept, ' Buy the truth, 

 and sell it not ; and so of wisdom and knowledge ' ; 

 judging that means were to be spent upon learning, and not 

 learning to be applied to means. And as for the private- 

 ness or obscureness (as it may be in vulgar estimation 

 accounted) of life of contemplative men ; it is a theme so 

 common to extol a private life, not taxed with sensuality 

 and sloth, in comparison and to the disadvantage of a civil 

 life, for safety, liberty, pleasure, and dignity, or at least 

 freedom from indignity, as no man handleth it but handleth 

 it well ; such a consonancy it hath to men's conceits in the 

 expressing and to men's consents in the allowing. This 

 only I will add, that learned men forgotten in states, and 

 not living in the eyes of men, are like the images of 

 Cassius and Brutus in the funeral of Junia; of which 

 not being represented, as many others were, Tacitus saith, 

 Eo ipso praefulgebant, quod non visebantur. 



And for meanness of employment, that which is most 

 traduced to contempt is that the government of youth 

 is commonly allotted to them ; which age, because it 

 is the age of least authority, it is transferred to the 

 disesteeming of those employments wherein youth is 

 conversant, and which are conversant about youth. But 

 how unjust this traducement is (if you will reduce things 

 from popularity of opinion to measure of reason) may 

 appear in that we see men are more curious what they put 

 into a new vessel than into a vessel seasoned, and what 

 mould they lay about a young plant than about a plant 

 corroborate ; so as the weakest terms and times of all 

 things use to have the best applications and helps. And 

 will you hearken to the Hebrew Rabbins ? ' Your young 

 men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream 

 dreams ' ; say they youth is the worthier age, for that 

 visions are nearer apparitions of God than dreams. And 

 let it be noted, that howsoever the conditions of life of 



