As for retirement, it is a theme so common to extol a private life, not taxed with sensuality and sloth, for the liberty, the pleasure, and the freedom from indignity it affords, that every one praises it well, such an agreement it has to the nature and apprehensions of mankind. This may be added, that learned men, forgotten in states and not living in the eyes of the world, are like the images of Cassius and Brutus at the funeral of Junia, which not being represented as many others were, Tacitus said of them that "they outshone the rest, because not seen.”h As for their meanness of employ, that most exposed to contempt is the education of youth, to which they are commonly allotted. But how unjust this reflection is to all who measure things, not by popular opinion, but by reason, will appear in the fact that men are more careful what they put into new vessels than into those already seasoned. It is manifest that things in their weakest state usually demand our best attention and assistance. Hearken to the Hebrew rabbins: "Your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams;"i upon which the commentators observe, that youth is the worthier age, inasmuch as revelation by vision is clearer than by dreams. And to say the truth, how much soever the lives of pedants have been ridiculed upon the stage, as the emblem of tyranny, because the modern looseness or negligence has not duly regarded the choice of proper schoolmasters and tutors; yet the wisdom of the ancientest and best times always complained that states were too busy with laws and too remiss in point of education. This excellent part of ancient discipline has in some measure been revived of late by the colleges of Jesuits abroad; in regard of whose diligence in fashioning the morals and cultivating the minds of youth, I may say, as Agesilaus said to his enemy Pharnabasus, Talis quum sis, utinam noster esses," k 66 2. The manners of learned men belong rather to their individual persons than to their studies or pursuits. No doubt, as in all other professions and conditions of life, bad and good are to be found among them; yet it must be adinitted that learning and studies, unless they fall in with * Plut. Life of Agesil. Arnals, iii. 76. i Joel ii. 28. very depraved dispositions, have, in conformity with the adage, "Abire studia in mores," a moral influence upon men's lives. For my part I cannot find that any disgrace to learning can proceed from the habits of learned men, inherent in them as learned, unless peradventure that may be a fault which was attributed to Demosthenes, Cicero, the second Cato, and many others, that seeing the times they read of more pure than their own, pushed their servility too far in the reformation of manners, and to seek to impose, by austere precepts, the laws of ancient asceticism upon dissolute times. Yet even antiquity should have forewarned them of this excess; for Solon, upon being asked if he had given his citizens the best laws, replied, "The best they were capable of receiving." And Plato, finding that he had fallen upon corrupt times, refused to take part in the administration of the commonwealth, saying that a man should treat his country with the same forbearance as his parents, and recall her from a wrong course, not by violence or contest, but by entreaty and persuasion.m Cæsar's counsellor administers the same caveat in the words, "Non ad vetera instituta revocamus quæ jampridem corruptis moribus ludibrio sunt." Cicero points out the same error in the second Cato, when writing to his friend Atticus:-" Cato optime sentit sed nocet interdum Reipublicae ; loquitur enim tanquam in Republica Platonis, non tanquam in fæce Romuli." The same orator likewise excuses and blames the philosophers for being too exact in their precepts. These preceptors, said he, have stretched the lines and limits of duties beyond their natural boundaries, thinking that we might safely reform when we had reached the highest point of perfection. And yet himself stumbled over the same stone, so that he might have said, "Monitis sum minor ipse meis.”¶ 3. Another fault laid to the charge of learned men, and arising from the nature of their studies, is, "That they esteem the preservation, good, and honour of their country before their own fortunes or safeties." Demosthenes said well to the Athenians, " My counsels are not such as tend to 1 Plutarch, Solon. Sallust, Cat. Conspiracy. Epist. Z. iii. 331; and cf. Ep. г. iii. 316. • Cicero to Atticus, epis. ii. 1. P Oratio pro L. Muræna, xxxi. 65. ¶ “I am unequal to my teaching.”—Ovid, Ars Amandi, ji, 548. aggrandize myself and diminish you, but sometimes not expedient for me to give, though always expedient for you to follow." So Seneca, after consecrating the five years o. Nero's minority to the immortal glory of learned governors, held on his honest course of good counsel after his master grew extremely corrupt. Nor can this be otherwise; for learning gives men a true sense of their frailty, the casualty of fortune, and the dignity of the soul and its office; whence they cannot think any greatness of fortune a worthy end of their living, and therefore live so as to give a clear and acceptable account to God and their superiors; whilst the corrupter sort of politicians, who are not by learning established in a love of duty, nor ever look abroad into universality, refer all things to themselves, and thrust their persons into the centre of the world, as if all lines should meet in them and their fortunes, without regarding in storms what becomes of the ship of the state, if they can save themselves in the cock-boat of their own fortune. Another charge brought against learned men, which may rather be defended than denied, is, "That they sometimes fail in making court to particular persons." This want of application arises from two causes-the one the largeness of their mind, which can hardly submit to dwell in the examination and observance of any one person. It is the speech of a lover rather than of a wise man, "Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus." 998 Nevertheless he who cannot contract the sight of his mind, as well as dilate it, wants a great talent in life. The second cause is, no inability, but a rejection upon choice and judgment; for the honest and just limits of observation in one person upon another extend no farther than to understand him sufficiently, so as to give him no offence, or be able to counsel him, or to stand upon reasonable guard and caution with respect to one's self; but to pry deep into another man, to learn to work, wind, or govern him, proceeds from a double heart, which in friendship is want of integrity, and towards princes or superiors want of duty. The eastern custom which forbids subjects to gaze upon princes, though in the outward ceremony bar Oration on the Crown. • Seneca, Ep. Mor. i. 7. barous, has a good moral; for men ought not, by cunning and studied observations, to penetrate and search into the hearts of kings, which the Scripture declares inscrutable.t Another fault noted in learned men is, "That they often fail in point of discretion and decency of behaviour, and commit errors in ordinary actions, whence vulgar capacities judge of them in greater matters by what they find them in small." But this consequence often deceives; for we may here justly apply the saying of Themistocles, who being asked to touch a lute, replied, "He could not fiddle, but he could make a little village a great city."u Accordingly many may be well skilled in government and policy, who are defective in little punctilios. So Plato compared his master Socrates to the shop-pots of apothecaries painted on the outside with apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign and precious remedies.x But we have nothing to offer in excuse of those unworthy practices, whereby some professors have debased both themselves and learning, as the trencher philosophers, who, in the decline of the Roman state, were but a kind of solemn parasites. Lucian makes merry with this kind of gentry, in the person of a philosopher riding in a coach with a great lady, who would needs have him carry her lapdog, which he doing with an awkward officiousness, the page said, "He feared the Stoic would turn Cynic." But above all, the gross flattery wherein many abuse their wit, by turning Hecuba into Hellena, and Faustina into Lucretia, has most diminished the value and esteem of learning. Neither is the modern practice of dedications commendable; for books should have no patrons but truth and reason. And the ancient custom was, to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or if to kings and great persons, it was to such as the subject suited. These and the like measures, therefore, deserve * Prov. xxv. " Cicero, Tuscul. Quæst. i. 2; Plutarch, Themistocles. ■ Conv. iii. 215; and cf. Xen. Symp. v. 7. Lucian de Merc. Cond. 33, 34. The raillery couched under the word cynic will become more evident if the reader will recollect the word is derived from Kuvos, the Greek name for dog. Those philoso phers were called Cynics who, like Diogenes, rather barked than declaimed against the vices and the manners of their age. Ed. • Du Bartas Bethulian's Rescue, b. v. translated by Sylvester. rather to be censured than defended. Yet the submission of learned men to those in power cannot be condemned. Diogenes, to one who asked him "How it happened that philosophers followed the rich, and not the rich the philosophers?" answered, "Because the philosophers know what they want, but the rich do not." And of the like nature was the answer of Aristippus, who having a petition to Dionysius, and no ear being given him, fell down at his feet, whereupon Dionysius gave him the hearing, and granted the suit; but when afterwards Aristippus was reproved for offering such an indignity to philosophy as to fall at a tyrant's feet, he replied, “It was not his fault if Dionysius's ears were in his feet." Nor was it accounted weakness, but discretion, in him that would not dispute his best with the Emperor Adrian, excusing himself, "That it was reasonable to yield to one that commanded thirty legions." These and the like condescensions to points of necessity and convenience, cannot be disallowed; for though they may have some show of external meanness, yet in a judgment truly made, they are submissions to the occasion, and not to the person. "d We proceed to the errors and vanities intermixed with the studies of learned men, wherein the design is not to countenance such errors, but, by a censure and separation thereof to justify what is sound and good; for it is the manner of men, especially the evil-minded, to depreciate what is excellent and virtuous, by taking advantage over what is corrupt and degenerate. We reckon three principal vanities for which learning has been traduced. Those things are vain which are either false or frivolous, or deficient in truth or use; and those persons are vain who are either credulous of falsities or curious in things of little use. But curiosity consists either in matter or words, that is, either in taking pains about vain things, or too much labour about the delicacy of language. There are, therefore, in reason as well as experience, three distempers of learning; viz., vain affectations, vain disputes, and vain imaginations, or effeminate learning, contentious learning, and fantastical learning. The first disease, which consists in a luxuriancy of style, has been anciently esteemed at different times, but strangely Laert. Life Diog. • Demonax. Laert. Life Arist. d Spartianus, Vit. Adriani, § 15. |