asses' skins.
There is hope of getting a fortune without digging in these quarries.
Sed meliore (in omne) ingenio animoque quam fortuna, sum usus. {23}
"Pingue solum lassat; sed juvat ipse labor." {24a}
Differentia inter doctos et sciolos.--Wits made out their several
expeditions then for the discovery of truth, to find out great and
profitable knowledges; had their several instruments for the disquisition
of arts. Now there are certain scioli or smatterers that are busy in the
skirts and outsides of learning, and have scarce anything of solid
literature to commend them. They may have some edging or trimming
of a scholar, a welt or so; but it is no more.
Impostorum fucus.--Imposture is a specious thing, yet never worse than
when it feigns to be best, and to none discovered sooner than the
simplest. For truth and goodness are plain and open; but imposture is
ever ashamed of the light.
Icunculorum motio.--A puppet-play must be shadowed and seen in the
dark; for draw the curtain, et sordet gesticulatio. {24b}
Principes et administri.--There is a great difference in the
understanding of some princes, as in the quality of their ministers about
them. Some would dress their masters in gold, pearl, and all true jewels
of majesty; others furnish them with feathers, bells, and ribands, and
are therefore esteemed the fitter servants. But they are ever good men
that must make good the times; if the men be naught, the times will be
such. Finis exspectandus est in unoquoque hominum; animali ad
mutationem promptissmo. {25a}
Scitum Hispanicum.--It is a quick saying with the Spaniards, Artes
inter haeredes non dividi. {25b} Yet these have inherited their fathers'
lying, and they brag of it. He is a narrow-minded man that affects a
triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie
themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her
bounds; but Impudence knows none.
Non nova res livor.--Envy is no new thing, nor was it born only in our
times. The ages past have brought it forth, and the coming ages will. So
long as there are men fit for it, quorum odium virtute relicta placet, it
will never be wanting. It is a barbarous envy, to take from those men's
virtues which, because thou canst not arrive at, thou impotently
despairest to imitate. Is it a crime in me that I know that which others
had not yet known but from me? or that I am the author of many things
which never would have come in thy thought but that I taught them? It
is new but a foolish way you have found out, that whom you cannot
equal or come near in doing, you would destroy or ruin with evil
speaking; as if you had bound both your wits and natures 'prentices to
slander, and then came forth the best artificers when you could form the
foulest calumnies.
Nil gratius protervo lib.--Indeed nothing is of more credit or request
now than a petulant paper, or scoffing verses; and it is but convenient
to the times and manners we live with, to have then the worst writings
and studies flourish when the best begin to be despised. Ill arts begin
where good end.
Jam literae sordent.--Pastus hodiern. ingen.--The time was when men
would learn and study good things, not envy those that had them. Then
men were had in price for learning; now letters only make men vile. He
is upbraidingly called a poet, as if it were a contemptible nick-name:
but the professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap--railing and
tinkling rhymers, whose writings the vulgar more greedily read, as
being taken with the scurrility and petulancy of such wits. He shall not
have a reader now unless he jeer and lie. It is the food of men's natures;
the diet of the times; gallants cannot sleep else. The writer must lie and
the gentle reader rests happy to hear the worthiest works misinterpreted,
the clearest actions obscured, the innocentest life traduced: and in such
a licence of lying, a field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be
matter wanting to his laughter? Hence comes the epidemical infection;
for how can they escape the contagion of the writings, whom the
virulency of the calumnies hath not staved off from reading?
Sed seculi morbus.--Nothing doth more invite a greedy reader than an
unlooked-for subject. And what more unlooked-for than to see a person
of an unblamed life made ridiculous or odious by the artifice of lying?
But it is the disease of the age; and no wonder if the world, growing old,
begin to be infirm: old age itself is a disease. It is long since the sick
world began to dote and talk idly: would she had but doted still! but her
dotage is
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