I.J AD VANCEMENT OF LEA K AVA t?. 1 1 5 



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: &quot;Deccm annos consompsi in 

 legendo Cicerone : M and the echo answered in Greek &quot;Ovf, 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 copia, 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 stcundum majus ct 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 invention, 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 de 

 gree ; and hereof likewise there is great use ; for surely, to the severe 

 inquisition of truth, and the deep progress into philosophy, it is some 

 hindrance; because it is too early satisfactory to the mind of man, 

 and quencheth the desire of farther search, before we come to n just 

 period; but then, if a man be to have any use of such knowledge in 

 civil occasions, of conference, counsel, persuasion, discourscor the like ; 

 then shall he find it prepared to his hands in those authors which 

 write in thnt manner. Hut the excess of this is so justly contemptible, 

 that as Hercules, when he saw the image of Adonis, Venus s minion, in 

 a temple, said in disdain, &quot; Nil sacri es ; &quot; so there is none of Hcr- 

 cules s followers in learning, that is, the more severe and laborious sort 

 of inquirers into truth, but will despise those delicacies and affecta 

 tions, as indeed capable of no divineness. And thus much of the first 

 disease or distemper of learning. 



The second, which followeth, is in nature worse than the former : for 

 as substance of matter is better than beauty of words, so, contrariwise, 

 vain matter is worse than vain words; wherein it seemcththe reprehen 

 sion of St. Paul was not only proper for those times, but prophetical 

 for the times following ; and not only respective to divinity, but exten 

 sive to all knowledge : &quot; Devita profanas vocum novitates, ct opposi- 

 tioncs falsi nominis sciential.&quot; For he assigncth two marks and badges 

 of suspected and falsified science : the one, the novelty and strangeness 

 of terms ; the other, the strictness of positions, which of necessity doth 

 induce oppositions, and so questions and altercations. Surely, like as 

 many substances in nature which are solid, do putrify and corrupt into 

 worms ; so it is the propriety of good and sound knowledge, to putrify 



