excellency lay in nothing but a disposition fitted for academical learning. Those whom we account the first authors of learning did not sweat in the schools, and yet we thought them born under good stars. To compose the manners of the people, to strengthen their country with wholesome counsel, to examine foreign rites and transport those that are good into their own land, to observe also the motions of the heavens, lest the seasons of the year for profitable uses of the people should not be known-this then was learning, and this our lettered men do but only imitate. For when those ancients did strive to teach humanity and virtue to the rude minds of the ignorant people, civil philosophy by that means had her original; when they contended against each other to persuade the people to this or that action, eloquence had then her beginning. Lastly, what doth history but leave the prudence and subtleties of those ancients to our now learned men as their successors, if they be men of action, but if they be minds unfit for business, then as to registers only and enrollers of the ancient virtue. For to read history only for contemplation is a vain and idle pleasure which passeth away without fruit, but to imitate the virtue of those praised men is the true and public learning.

I will not deny but that is indeed a most absolute accomplished soul which is framed both for the commonwealth and learning too. For then these two endowments do by their mutual aid advance each other to the sky. His high and active policy doth govern his learning that it grow not light nor base; his learning again doth arm that policy that it should not only trust to experience and knowledge of his own times, but make use of the skill and labors of antiquity.

But if any man, as sometimes it happens, fit for public employment and to aid his country, have no felicity

at all in learning, he is notwithstanding to be esteemed of a higher order and elegance than he which is only capable of quiet learning and school subtleties, unfit altogether for civil discipline, which is most useful. Insomuch as Favorinus may be thought rather philosophically than jestingly to have measured the knowledge of Hadrian by the greatness of his power. The emperor Adrian was ambitious of the fame of learning and lighted by chance upon the philosopher Favorinus. He, being provoked in argument by the emperor, answered sparingly and as if he yielded, that the emperor might freely triumph. His friends blamed him for yielding so soon, but he replied that they were deceived, "For why (quoth he) should not I think him the most learned which hath twenty legions?" The philosopher spake not this without good ground, for to govern discreetly so many legions was a point of higher science than to find out anything in the schools by the strongest and most exercised head in contemplation.

But the splendor of wit as of all things else is often spoiled by too great a confidence of itself. For many, conscious of their own weakness, do endeavor by labor to obtain that which nature had denied to them, and by daily diligence do so mould and frame their minds that at last they excel those which were born happily to great matters, but considering too much the strength of their own minds, have abstained from labor as a thing not necessary to them but altogether superfluous. There is also a great difference even betwixt those who by industry endeavor to perfect their wits. For some of them, whatsoever they purpose as their study and labor, are busied only in the main and highest points of it, but do not so much as let their thoughts descend to the lower

1 SPARTIANUS, Life of Hadrian, XV, 8 (In Scriptores Historae Augustae, Loeb Classics I, 49).

and less necessary points. Others are overtaken with a contrary error, who fearing to leave anything behind them untried and undiscovered, do so strictly search into the least things and are so desirous perfectly to scan whatsoever they learn, that they cannot make any great progress in their intended studies nor ever arrive at the true and liberal knowledge of that thing whose every part they have so superstitiously desired to discover.

Besides, all wits have not the same strength of patience to endure continual labor. For the more subtle and apprehensive that the mind is, so the more easily it penetrateth into any learning, but is dulled the sooner either by greatness or continuance of labor. For such minds are not kept in thick constitutions but such as are open and fit to receive aerial draughts and pervious for the passage of animal and vital spirits, who, as more subtly they can display their sharpness, so by their thinness they vanish and are only repaired by idleness and recreation. And of such men not only the labor, but even the recreation is precious, as filling their discharged minds with a new strength, and for the most part storing their loose and wandering fancies with high and serious cogitations, as the felicity of rich fields, when they lie untilled, doth sometime of its own accord plentifully and wantonly produce such plants as are not inferior to the best garden fruits. So thought Cosmo de Medicis, a sufficient author of prudence, the founder of that flourishing Tuscan monarchy. He had taken his rest quietly and without care, as it seemed, till it was late day, when one of his friends coming in by chance found him as yet between sleeping and waking. “And where (quoth he) is that Cosmo to whom we, as to an Argus, have committed our commonwealth? He does not use his eyes so much as in the daytime." "I have already dispatched all my business both abroad and at home,"

Cosmo replies. "Dost thou think that in diligence thou hast outgone me, whose very rest is more active and profitable than thy labors?"

Yet some notwithstanding are exempted from this fate, and, though men of great capacity, can endure continual labor. Few they are and bestowed by nature as her dearest gifts upon the public affairs, who can exercise their deep and piercing wits in lasting diligence, able to undergo perpetual employment and not confounded with the different face of business, so that they seem to be born as a relief to human imbecility and a preservation of commonwealths.

LORD CHANDOS or
GILBERT CAVENDISH

OF AFFECTATION

AFFECTATION is an over-serious love to ordinary and minute qualities, or the putting on the habiliments of sufficiency on the body of pride. It is a vanity that shame forbids to be acknowledged, yet folly permits not to be concealed. For howsoever a man may appear to himself more complete and full in the vestiments of virtue by their largeness, yet in the eye of another their disproportion will make him seem the more slender, none being fit to wear the coat of Hercules but such as have strength to wield his club. Nor shall he ever be thought to have Cæsar's spirit that much careth to scratch his head like him with one finger.

It argues a desire of honor but no action towards it. For whatsoever the wishes of one that useth affectation aim at, yet his attempts reach no higher than to the imitation of certain gestures and manners of speech, which being comely, facile and natural, as they have the second place to real virtue, so if they be unsuitable, forced or counterfeit, they come no less near to vice and diminish more the estimation than some great crimes. For whereas some such vices as be notorious make a man more welcome into some societies and some make him to be feared, this vanity causeth him to be desired in no company, but scorned and contemned in all.

I esteem it a great vexation to see one affect a gravity in behavior as he will look upon you with the staidness

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