252 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



libels and slanders and taxations of the state, which is of 

 the same kind with rebellion, but more feminine. So in 

 the fable that the rest of the gods having conspired to 

 bind Jupiter, Pallas called Briareus with his hundred hands 

 to his aid : expounded that monarchies need not fear any 

 curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as long 

 as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who will 

 be sure to come in on their side. So in the fable that 

 Achilles was brought up under Chiron the Centaur, who 

 was part a man and part a beast : expounded ingeniously 

 but corruptly by Machiavel, that it belongeth to the 

 education and discipline of princes to know as well how 

 to play the part of the lion in violence and the fox in 

 guile, as of the man in virtue and justice. Nevertheless 

 in many the like encounters, I do rather think that the 

 fable was first, and the exposition devised, than that the 

 moral was first, and thereupon the fable framed. For I 

 find it was an ancient vanity in Chrysippus, that troubled 

 himself with great contention to fasten the assertions of 

 the Stoics upon the fictions of the ancient poets. But yet 

 that all the fables and fictions of the poets were but 

 pleasure and not figure, I interpose no opinion. Surely of 

 those poets which are now extant, even Homer himself, 

 (notwithstanding he was made a kind of Scripture by the 

 later schools of the Grecians,) yet I should without any 

 difficulty pronounce that his fables had no such inwardness 

 in his own meaning ; but what they might have upon a 

 more original tradition, is not easy to affirm ; for he was 

 not the inventor of many of them. 



In this third part of learning, which is poesy, I can 

 report no deficience. For being as a plant that cometh of 

 the lust of the earth, without a formal seed, it hath sprung 

 up and spread abroad more than any other kind. But to 

 ascribe unto it that which is due ; for the expressing of 

 afFections, passions, corruptions, and customs, we are be- 

 holding to poets more than to the philosophers 7 works ; 

 and for wit and eloquence not much less than to orators' 

 harangues. But it is not good to stay too long in the 

 theatre. Let us now pass on to the judicial place or 



