IT.] ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 143 



which shall be found inconvenient. For it is one of your majesty s 

 own most wise and princely maxims, &quot; That in all usages and pre 

 cedents, the times be considered wherein they first began, which if 

 they were weak or ignorant, it dcrogatcth from the authority of the 

 , and leaveth it for suspect.&quot; And therefore inasmuch as most 

 of the usages and orders of the universities were derived from more 

 obscure times, it is the more requisite they be re-examined. In this 

 kind I will give an instance or two, for example s sake, of things that 

 are the most obvious and familiar : the one is a matter, which though 

 it be ancient and general, yet I hold to be an error, which is, that 

 scholars in universities come too soon and too unripe to logic and 

 rhetoric, arts fitter for graduates than children and novices ; for these 

 two, rightly taken, arc the gravest of sciences, being the arts of arts, 

 the one for judgment, the other for ornament. And they be the rules 

 and directions how to set forth and dispose matter ; and therefore for 

 minds empty and unfr.iught with matter, and which have not gathered 

 that which Cicero calleth sylva and supdlex, stuff and variety, to 

 begin with those arts, as if one should learn to weigh, or to measure, 

 or to paint the wind, doth work but this effect that the wisdom of those 

 arts, which is great and universal, is almost made contemptible, and is 

 degenerate into childish sophistry and ridiculous affectation. And 

 farther, the untimely learning of them hath drawn on, by consequence, 

 the superficial and unprofitable teaching and writing of them, as fittcth 

 indeed to the capacity of children. Another, ic a lack I find in the 

 exercises used in the universities, which. do make too great a divorce 

 between invention and memory ; for their speeches arc cither pre 

 meditate /// I crbis conccptis, where nothing is left to invention ; or 

 merely cxtcmporal, where little is left to memory ; whereas in life and 

 action there is least use of cither of these, but rather of intermixtures 

 of premeditation and invention, notes and memory ; so as the exercise 

 fitteth not the practice, nor the image the life ; and it is ever a true 

 rule in exercises, that they be framed as near as may be to the life of 

 practice, for otherwise they do pervert the motions and faculties of the 

 mind, and not prepare them. The truth whereof is not obscure, when 

 scholars come to the practices of professions, or other actions of civil 

 life, which when they set into, this want is soon found by themselves, 

 ajul sooner by others. But this part, touching the amendment of the 

 institutions and orders of universities, I will conclude with the clause 

 of Caesar s letter to Oppius and Balbus, &quot; Hoc quemadmodum fieri 

 possit, nonnulla mihi in mcntcm vcniunt, et multa rcpcriri possunt : de 

 lis rebus rogo vos, ut cogitationem suscipiatis.&quot; 



Another defect, which I note, ascendcth a little higher than the 

 precedent ; for as the proficience of learning consisteth much in the 

 orders and iustitutions of universities in the same states and king 

 doms, so it would yet more be advanced, if there were more 

 intelligence mutual between the universities of Europe than now 

 there is. We sec there be many orders and foundations, which 

 though they be divided under several sovereignties and territories, 

 yet they take themselves to have a kind of contract, fraternity, and 



