THE FIRST BOOK 191 



his own books of periods and imitation and the like. Then 

 did Car of Cambridge, and Ascham, with their lectures and 

 writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure 

 all young men that were studious unto that delicate and 

 polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus take occasion 

 to make the scoffing echo; Decem annos consumpsi in legendo 

 Cicerone, and the echo answered in Greek, one, Asine. 

 Then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly 

 despised as barbarous. In sum, the whole inclination and 

 bent of those times was rather towards copie than weight. 



Here therefore [is] the first distemper of learning, when 

 men study words and not matter : whereof though I have 

 represented an example of late times, yet it hath been and 

 will be secundum majus et minus in all time. And how is it 

 possible but this should have an operation to discredit 

 learning, even with vulgar capacities, when they see learned 

 men's works like the first letter of a patent or limned book; 

 which though it hath large flourishes, yet it 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. 



But yet notwithstanding it is a thing not hastily to be 

 condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of 

 philosophy 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 

 likewise there is great use; for surely to the severe inquisi- 

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

 some hinderance ; 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 con- 

 ference, counsel, persuasion, discourse, or the like; 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 contemptible, that as Hercules, when he saw 

 the image of Adonis, Venus' minion, in a temple, said in 



