CHAPTER XXV

OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

TO MADAME DIANE DE FOIX, Comtesse de Gurson

I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit or

deformed, would not, notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, if he

were not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, that

he did not well enough discern his defects; but that with all defaults he

was still his. Just so, I see better than any other, that all I write

here are but the idle reveries of a man that has only nibbled upon the

outward crust of sciences in his nonage, and only retained a general and

formless image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything and

nothing of the whole, ‘a la Francoise’. For I know, in general, that

there is such a thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts in

mathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and,

peradventure, I yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto,

in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther than that, and

to have cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all

modern learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science,

I have never done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able to

draw the first lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not a

boy of the lowest form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser than

I, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at

any time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him,

unaptly enough, some universal questions, such as may serve to try his

natural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his is

to me.

I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid

learning but Plutarch and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, I

eternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; something of which drops

upon this paper, but little or nothing stays with me. History is my

particular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I have

particular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice,

forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible

and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse

darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and

apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the natural

parts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under the

burden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and

stumbling in the way; and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no

degree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of land

before me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds,

that I am not able to penetrate. And taking upon me to write

indifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use of

nothing but my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, as

oft-times it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same heads

and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but just

now in Plutarch’s “Discourse of the Force of Imagination”), to see myself

so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of those

better writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myself

with this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune to

jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at a very great

distance, and can say, “Ah, that is so.” I am farther satisfied to find

that I have a quality, which every one is not blessed withal, which is,

to discern the vast difference between them and me; and notwithstanding

all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run on

in their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that this

comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in plain truth, a man had

need of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. The

indiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their laborious

nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with a

design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quite

contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders the

complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they

lose much more than they get.

The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quite

contrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages and

sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medea

of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man

pick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave him

nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in

three hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much as one

quotation.--[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Chyysippus, vii. 181, and

Epicurus, x. 26.]

I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading a

French book, where after I had a long time run dreaming over a great many

words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that

indeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I

came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to

the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the

ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular

a precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the

first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence

discovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had

since the heart to descend into it any more. If I should set out one of

my discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidently

manifest the imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault in

others that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no more unreasonable,

than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to be

everywhere reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I know

very well how audaciously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equal

myself to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, not

without a temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader from

discerning the difference; but withal it is as much by the benefit of my

application, that I hope to do it, as by that of my invention or any

force of my own. Besides, I do not offer to contend with the whole body

of these champions, nor hand to hand with anyone of them: ‘tis only by

flights and little light attempts that I engage them; I do not grapple

with them, but try their strength only, and never engage so far as I make

a show to do. If I could hold them in play, I were a brave fellow; for I

never attack them; but where they are most sinewy and strong. To cover a

man’s self (as I have seen some do) with another man’s armour, so as not

to discover so much as his fingers’ ends; to carry on a design (as it is

not hard for a man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinary

subject to do) under old inventions patched up here and there with his

own trumpery, and then to endeavour to conceal the theft, and to make it

pass for his own, is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those who

do it, who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a

reputation, endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon the

world in their own name, which they have no manner of title to; and next,

a ridiculous folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorant

approbation of the vulgar by such a pitiful cheat, at the price at the

same time of degrading themselves in the eyes of men of understanding,

who turn up their noses at all this borrowed incrustation, yet whose

praise alone is worth the having. For my own part, there is nothing I

would not sooner do than that, neither have I said so much of others, but

to get a better opportunity to explain myself. Nor in this do I glance

at the composers of centos, who declare themselves for such; of which

sort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, and

particularly one under the name of Capilupus, besides the ancients.

These are really men of wit, and that make it appear they are so, both by

that and other ways of writing; as for example, Lipsius, in that learned

and laborious contexture of his Politics.

But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudes

may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my old

bald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented you

not with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular

opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe,

and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in

this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure,

be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to

change me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it,

being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others.

Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told me

at my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse on

the education of children.--[“Which, how fit I am to do, let my friends

flatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion of my

own talent, as to promise myself any very good success from my

endeavour.” This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton.

At all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or in

Coste.]--

Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could not

possibly better employ it, than to present my best instructions to the

little man that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are too

generous to begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great a

hand in the treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular right

and interest in the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shall

spring from it; beside that, your having had the best of my services so

long in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour and

advantage of all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all I

understand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and most

important difficulty of human science is the education of children. For

as in agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as also

planting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which

is planted comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art

to be used, more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivate

and bring it to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get

children; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude,

and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up. The symptoms of

their inclinations in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises so

uncertain and fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solid

judgment or conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, and

Themistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived the

expectation men had of them. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover

their natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grownup,

applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certain

opinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs,

easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; and

yet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes to

pass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take very

great pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up children

to things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totally

unfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, that

they ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous studies,

without taking too much notice of, or being too superstitious in those

light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years, and to

which Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too much authority.

Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use,

especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are.

And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform

its true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the

conduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leagues

and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a

syllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a

dose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omit

this so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself

have tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet

have the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, your

husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de

Candale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will

extend the knowledge of this quality in your family for so many

succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your

ladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common

method, which is all I am able to contribute to your service in this

affair.

The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice

of whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other

great and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust,

besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not

mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules:

and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so far

only as it shall appear advisable.

For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account

of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour

of the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and

depends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own

proper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having

rather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar

or learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends

solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than a

well-filled head;--[“‘Tete bien faite’, an expression created by

Montaigne, and which has remained a part of our language.”--Servan.]--

seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two to

prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should

exercise his charge after a new method.

‘Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil’s

ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the

pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a

tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should

according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test,

permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern

and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving

him to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent

and speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.

Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and

then they spoke to them--[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36.]

“Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt,

auctoritas eorum, qui docent.”

[“The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to

those who desire to learn.”--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]

It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may

judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to

accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want of

which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, and

to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things I

know, and ‘tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know how

to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them.

I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.

Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with one and

the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct several

boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and

‘tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not found

above two or three who bring away any good account of their time and

discipline. Let the master not only examine him about the grammatical

construction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the sense and let

him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory,

but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into a

hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to

see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking

instruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato. ‘Tis

a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same

condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office

unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it

to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled to

follow the appetite of another’s fancy, enslaved and captivated under the

authority of another’s instruction; we have been so subjected to the

trammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own

vigour and liberty are extinct and gone:

“Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt.”

[“They are ever in wardship.”--Seneca, Ep., 33.]

I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an

Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: “That the touchstone and

square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute

conformity to Aristotle’s doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but

inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all.” A position,

that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted,

brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition at

Rome.

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads, and

lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust.

Aristotle’s principles will then be no more principles to him, than those

of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded

to, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not,

he will remain in doubt.

“Che non men the saver, dubbiar m’ aggrata.”

[“I love to doubt, as well as to know.”--Dante, Inferno, xi. 93]

for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason,

they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another,

follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing.

“Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet.”

[“We are under no king; let each vindicate himself.”

--Seneca, Ep.,33]

Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he

imbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts;

and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he know

how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every

one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them

after: ‘tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both

he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets

from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them,

but themselves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely their

own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrows

from others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a work

that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment:

his instruction, labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that.

He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that have

assisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them.

Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases and

buildings to every one’s view: but do not proclaim how they came by the

money. We do not see the fees and perquisites of a gentleman of the long

robe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and his

family, and the titles and honours he has obtained for him and his. No

man divulges his revenue; or, at least, which way it comes in but every

one publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are to

become better and more wise. ‘Tis, says Epicharmus, the understanding

that sees and hears, ‘tis the understanding that improves everything,

that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all other

faculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul. And certainly we render

it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege to

do anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought of

grammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of Cicero? Our

masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establish

them like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the

substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies

no more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That

which a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at

his own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had

it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is

a poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no

foundation for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to the

opinion of Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the

true philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends;

mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two

noted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only

seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend

to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we

could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the

trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well,

without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of

our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is

book sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of a

servant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects.

And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and

travel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young

monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda--[The

Pantheon of Agrippa.]--is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora

Livia’s petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero’s face, in a statue

in such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some

medal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners,

customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may

whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I

would that a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as to

kill two birds with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whose

language is most differing from our own, and to which, if it be not

formed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend.

And also ‘tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not be

brought up in his mother’s lap. Mothers are too tender, and their

natural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so

overfond, that they can neither find in their hearts to give them due

correction for the faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be inured

to hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to

see them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold

drink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a

foil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine.

And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good for

anything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him when

young, and must very often transgress the rules of physic:

“Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat

In rebus.”

[“Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about something.”

--Horace, Od. ii., 3, 5.]

It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his sinews

strong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the members,

and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I know

very well to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from being

accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and

presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in

their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind,

which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I

have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and

insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less

to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would

neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when

wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, ‘tis rather strength

of nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour,

is to be accustomed to endure pain:

“Labor callum obducit dolori.”

[“Labour hardens us against pain.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 15.]

A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to

be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics,

cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by

misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world

goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for

proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws,

threatens the honestest men with the whip and the halter.

And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which

ought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, is

often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also

be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master’s

son, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to,

are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.

And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I have

observed this vice, that instead of gathering observations from others,

we make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them, and are more

concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how to

increase our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore, and modesty are

very advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore,

train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when he

has acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving every

idle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for

it is a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not

agreeable to our own palate. Let him be satisfied with correcting

himself, and not seem to condemn everything in another he would not do

himself, nor dispute it as against common customs.

“Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia.”

[“Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy.”

--Seneca, Ep., 103.]

Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this childish

ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than he

really will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as if

opportunities of interrupting and reprehending were not to be omitted, to

desire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary.

For as it becomes none but great poets to make use of the poetical

licence, so it is intolerable for any but men of great and illustrious

souls to assume privilege above the authority of custom:

“Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem

fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et

divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur.”

[“If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against manners

and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the same; for

it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this

privilege.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 41.]

Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with a

champion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all the

little subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only such

arguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in the

election and choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and

consequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned to

acquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it,

whether in his opponent’s argument, or upon better consideration of his

own; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of

words and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever,

than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a

trade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better

thoughts, are to be sold for ready money:

“Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint,

defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur.”

[“Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should defend

all things that are prescribed and enjoined him.”

--Cicero, Acad., ii. 3.]

If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very good

and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and

very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of

having any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several

other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest

man ought to have, a man’s judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by

these particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise

its function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A man

that is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or

think otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst so

many millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand to

nourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, must

needs, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and

dazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind of

phrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though

what they say in that courtly language is not much to be believed.

Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and

have only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that to

acknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only

found out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are

the principal things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contention

are common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and

correct himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of

dispute, are rare, great, and philosophical qualities.

Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in every

corner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seized

upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes are

seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when,

whilst they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting the

beauty of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that have

been very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost and

thrown away. Let him examine every man’s talent; a peasant, a

bricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of these

in their several capacities, and something will be picked out of their

discourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another; nay, even

the folly and impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction.

By observing the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create to

himself an emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad.

Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitive

after everything; whatever there is singular and rare near the place

where he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, an

eminent man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, the

passages of Caesar and Charlemagne:

“Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,

Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat.”

[“What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with heat,

what wind serves fairest for Italy.”--Propertius, iv. 3, 39.]

Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes,

things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know.

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only

live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books,

converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. ‘Tis an idle

and vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent

manner, but to those who do it with care and observation, ‘tis a study of

inestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that

the Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap

as to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But,

withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions are

principally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil’s

memory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and

Scipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his

duty that he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrative

parts of history as to judge them; the reading of them, in my opinion,

is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the most

differing measure. I have read a hundred things in Livy that another has

not, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a hundred

more there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that author

ever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar study, to others the very

anatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our human

nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthy

to be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of all

others the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are a

thousand others which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he only

points with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, and

contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest

article of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest. As, for

example, where he says’--[In the Essay on False Shame.]--that the

inhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having been

able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave

perhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his “Voluntary

Servitude.” Only to see him pick out a light action in a man’s life, or

a mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole

discourse. ‘Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so

immoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by

it, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should

applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us

with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already

read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the best

subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good.

but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: “O stranger! thou

speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speak

them.”--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians.]--Such as have lean

and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who are

defective in matter endeavour to make amends with words.

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation

with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves,

and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One asking

Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but

of the world;--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4.]--

he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world for

his country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind;

not as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of my

village are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes,

that the indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, and

that the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing the

havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine of

the world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand;

without considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that in

the meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of the

earth for all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunity

that always attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, and

that there is no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones

patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and

tempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if

that simple king of France could have managed his fortune as he should

have done, he might in time have come to have been steward of the

household to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallow

imagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke of

Savoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an

error of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. But

whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image

of our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face

shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observe

himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger

than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole,

that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate

and grandeur.

This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one

genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to

know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would

have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most

attention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions,

laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our

understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which

is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and

so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough

to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous

victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our

hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of

light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.

The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of

so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without

closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of

men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good

company in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to

say,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 3.]--that our life resembles the great

and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the

body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring

merchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none of

the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and

consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the

lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their

own.

To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of

philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought to

be especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know--

“Quid fas optare: quid asper

Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis

Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse

Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;

Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur.”

[“Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined

money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country

and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to

be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we

are ant to what purpose engendered.”--Persius, iii. 69]

what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and

design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the difference

betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and

liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far

death, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;

“Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem.”

[“And how you may shun or sustain every hardship.”

--Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]

by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations

and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should

season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners

and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig

and well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that

which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to

the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also

do; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves

to that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life

within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the

sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are,

that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we

had better let alone, and, following Socrates’ direction, limit the

course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real

utility:

“Sapere aude;

Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,

Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille

Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum.”

[“Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is

like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but

the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to

ages without end.”--Horace, Ep., i. 2.]

‘Tis a great foolery to teach our children:

“Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,

Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,”

[“What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or

Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave.”--Propertius, iv. I, 89.]

the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before

their own:

[“What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?”

--Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, “To what purpose,” said he, “should I

trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or

slavery continually before my eyes?” for the kings of Persia were at that

time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus,

“Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition,

and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over

the world’s changes?”

After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may

then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry,

rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to,

his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly

make his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by

discourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the

author himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands,

and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not

conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books

contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him,

that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of,

to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of

teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,--[Theodore

Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]--in which the precepts are so

intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant,

that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens and

elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed upon

and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison,

much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe.

‘Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age

of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be,

looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value,

either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty

sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And

people are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so

difficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect.

Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly

countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I

had like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting

and jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit

there. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot

of philosophers set chatting together, said to them,--[Plutarch, Treatise

on Oracles which have ceased]--“Either I am much deceived, or by your

cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deep

discourse.” To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:

“Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of

the verb ------ is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after the

derivation of the comparatives ----- and -----, and the superlatives ----

and ------, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but

as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those

that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad.”

“Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro

Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque

Inde habitum facies.”

[“You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you

may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the

mind.”--Juvenal, ix. 18]

The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of

health, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought to

make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and

her contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould,

and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active and

joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most

manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like

that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

‘Tis Baroco and Baralipton--[Two terms of the ancient scholastic

logic.]--that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not

she; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she

that calms and appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and who

teaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain

imaginary epicycles, but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue

for her end, which is not, as the schoolmen say, situate upon the summit

of a perpendicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as have

approached her find her, quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair,

fruitful, and flourishing plain, whence she easily discovers all things

below; to which place any one may, however, arrive, if he know but the

way, through shady, green, and sweetly-flourishing avenues, by a

pleasant, easy, and smooth descent, like that of the celestial vault.

‘Tis for not having frequented this supreme, this beautiful, triumphant,

and amiable, this equally delicious and courageous virtue, this so

professed and implacable enemy to anxiety, sorrow, fear, and constraint,

who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for her

companions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination,

and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful,

threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed it

upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it a

hobgoblin to affright people.

But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be

his duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection than

reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have

evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him

sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues

of the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall

once find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante

or an Angelica--[Heroines of Ariosto.]--for a mistress, a natural,

active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison

of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in

the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other

tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look

upon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite

contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia.

Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height

and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure

of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and

the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is by

order, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. Socrates, her first

minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it

aside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress; ‘tis

the nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just,

renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in

breath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses,

whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal

mother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if

not to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the

toper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten

to a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to

pleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and forms

another, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. She

can be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumed

beds: she loves life, beauty, glory, and health; but her proper and

peculiar office is to know how to regulate the use of all these good

things, and how to lose them without concern: an office much more noble

than troublesome, and without which the whole course of life is

unnatural, turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men may

justly represent those monsters upon rocks and precipices.

If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that he

had rather hear a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some noble

expedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum,

that excites the youthful ardour of his companions, leaves that to follow

another that calls to a morris or the bears; who would not wish, and find

it more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweat

victorious from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prize

of those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prentice

in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of

a duke; according to Plato’s precept, that children are to be placed out

and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition of

the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own

souls.

Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live, and that infancy has

there its lessons as well as other ages, why is it not communicated to

children betimes?

“Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri

Fingendus sine fine rota.”

[“The clay is moist and soft: now, now make haste, and form the

pitcher on the rapid wheel.”--Persius, iii. 23.]

They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living.

A hundred students have got the pox before they have come to read

Aristotle’s lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he should

live two men’s ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyric

poets; and I find these sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable.

The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but

the first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to education; the

remainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time in

necessary instruction. Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics;

they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take the

plain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and then

rightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one of

Boccaccio’s novels; a child from nurse is much more capable of them, than

of learning to read or to write. Philosophy has discourses proper for

childhood, as well as for the decrepit age of men.

I am of Plutarch’s mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great

disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements of

geometry; as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valour,

prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with this

ammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than thirty thousand

foot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two thousand crowns, to

subjugate the empire of the whole earth. For the other acts and

sciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence and

charm, and had them in very great honour and esteem, but not ravished

with them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the practice of them

In his own person:

“Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,

Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis.”

[“Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the mind,

and stores for miserable grey hairs.”--Persius, v. 64.]

Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus,--[Diogenes

Laertius, x. 122.]--says, “That neither the youngest should refuse to

philosophise, nor the oldest grow weary of it.” Who does otherwise,

seems tacitly to imply, that either the time of living happily is

not yet come, or that it is already past. And yet, a for all that, I

would not have this pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to his

book; nor would I have him given up to the morosity and melancholic

humour of a sour ill-natured pedant.

I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying him to the

rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day,

and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when,

by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to

be overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for that

renders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from better

employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an

immoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it,

that he would not find time so much as to comb his head or to pare his

nails. Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled and corrupted

by the incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdom

was anciently turned into proverb: “Early, but of no continuance.” And,

in truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious and pleasing

than the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope and

expectation that have been conceived of them; and grown up to be men,

have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have heard men of

good understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our young

people (and of which we have but too many) make them such animals as they

are.--[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other people

he should have been as great a blockhead as they. W.C.H.] [And Bacon

before Hobbe’s time had discussed the “futility” of university teaching.

D.W.]

But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed,

solitude, and company, morning and evening, all hours shall be the same,

and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the formatrix of

judgment and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has that privilege

to have a hand in everything. The orator Isocrates, being at a feast

entreated to speak of his art, all the company were satisfied with and

commended his answer: “It is not now a time,” said he, “to do what I can

do; and that which it is now time to do, I cannot do.”--[Plutarch,

Symp., i. I.]--For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a company

met together to laugh and make good cheer, had been very unreasonable and

improper, and as much might have been said of all the other sciences.

But as to what concerns philosophy, that part of it at least that treats

of man, and of his offices and duties, it has been the common opinion of

all wise men, that, out of respect to the sweetness of her conversation,

she is ever to be admitted in all sports and entertainments. And Plato,

having invited her to his feast, we see after how gentle and obliging a

manner, accommodated both to time and place, she entertained the company,

though in a discourse of the highest and most important nature:

“Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque;

Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit.”

[“It profits poor and rich alike, but, neglected, equally hurts old

and young.”--Horace, Ep., i. 25.]

By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and

better employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the steps we

take in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, do

not tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so our

lesson, as it were accidentally occurring, without any set obligation of

time or place, and falling naturally into every action, will insensibly

insinuate itself. By which means our very exercises and recreations,

running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will

prove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashion

and mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with

his mind. ‘Tis not a soul, ‘tis not a body that we are training up, but

a man, and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to

fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two

horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he not seem to

allow more time for, and to take more care of exercises for the body, and

to hold that the mind, in a good proportion, does her business at the

same time too?

As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with a

severe sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who,

instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle

ways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules,

horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion!

than which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a

well-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and

chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to heat and cold, to

wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from all

effeminacy and delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking;

accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris,

a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I have

ever from a child to the age wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and

am still constant to it. But amongst other things, the strict

government of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me;

peradventure, they might have erred less perniciously on the indulgent

side. ‘Tis a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They are

made debauched by being punished before they are so. Do but come in

when they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but the

outcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of their

pedagogues drunk with fury. A very pretty way this, to tempt these

tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a furious

countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way of

proceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very well observed, that this

imperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences,

and particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would it

be to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, than

with the bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my

ordering. I should paint the school with the pictures of joy and

gladness; Flora and the Graces, as the philosopher Speusippus did his.

Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too. Such

viands as are proper and wholesome for children, should be sweetened

with sugar, and such as are dangerous to them, embittered with gall.

‘Tis marvellous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning

the gaiety and diversion of the youth of his city, and how much and

often he enlarges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of

which, he says, that antiquity has given the ordering and patronage

particularly to the gods themselves, to Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses.

He insists long upon, and is very particular in, giving innumerable

precepts for exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says very

little, and only seems particularly to recommend poetry upon the account

of music.

All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided, as

inconsistent with civil society. Who would not be astonished at so

strange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander the

Great, who sweated in the shade and shivered in the sun? I have seen

those who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with greater

precipitation than from a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse;

others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at the making

of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight nor the

crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, peradventure,

be some occult cause and natural aversion in these cases; but, in my

opinion, a man might conquer it, if he took it in time. Precept has in

this wrought so effectually upon me, though not without some pains on my

part, I confess, that beer excepted, my appetite accommodates itself

indifferently to all sorts of diet. Young bodies are supple; one should,

therefore, in that age bend and ply them to all fashions and customs: and

provided a man can contain the appetite and the will within their due

limits, let a young man, in God’s name, be rendered fit for all nations

and all companies, even to debauchery and excess, if need be; that is,

where he shall do it out of complacency to the customs of the place.

Let him be able to do everything, but love to do nothing but what is

good. The philosophers themselves do not justify Callisthenes for

forfeiting the favour of his master Alexander the Great, by refusing to

pledge him a cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, wench with his prince:

nay, I would have him, even in his debauches, too hard for the rest of

the company, and to excel his companions in ability and vigour, and that

he may not give over doing it, either through defect of power or

knowledge how to do it, but for want of will.

“Multum interest, utrum peccare ali quis nolit, an nesciat.”

[“There is a vast difference betwixt forbearing to sin, and not

knowing how to sin.”--Seneca, Ep., 90]

I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, as free from those excesses

as any man in France, by asking him before a great deal of very good

company, how many times in his life he had been drunk in Germany, in the

time of his being there about his Majesty’s affairs; which he also took

as it was intended, and made answer, “Three times”; and withal told us

the whole story of his debauches. I know some who, for want of this

faculty, have found a great inconvenience in negotiating with that

nation. I have often with great admiration reflected upon the wonderful

constitution of Alcibiades, who so easily could transform himself to so

various fashions without any prejudice to his health; one while outdoing

the Persian pomp and luxury, and another, the Lacedaemonian austerity and

frugality; as reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia:

“Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.”

[“Every complexion of life, and station, and circumstance became

Aristippus.”--Horace, Ep., xvii. 23.]

I would have my pupil to be such an one,

“Quem duplici panno patentia velat,

Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit,

Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque.”

[“I should admire him who with patience bearing a patched garment,

bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well.”

--Horace Ep., xvii. 25.]

These are my lessons, and he who puts them in practice shall reap more

advantage than he who has had them read to him only, and so only knows

them. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see him. God

forbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophise were only to read a great

many books, and to learn the arts.

“Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam,

vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt.”

[“They have proceeded to this discipline of living well, which of

all arts is the greatest, by their lives, rather than by their

reading.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 3.]

Leo, prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides Ponticus--[It was not

Heraclides of Pontus who made this answer, but Pythagoras.]--of what art

or science he made profession: “I know,” said he, “neither art nor

science, but I am a philosopher.” One reproaching Diogenes that, being

ignorant, he should pretend to philosophy; “I therefore,” answered he,

“pretend to it with so much the more reason.” Hegesias entreated that he

would read a certain book to him: “You are pleasant,” said he; “you

choose those figs that are true and natural, and not those that are

painted; why do you not also choose exercises which are naturally true,

rather than those written?”

The lad will not so much get his lesson by heart as he will practise it:

he will repeat it in his actions. We shall discover if there be prudence

in his exercises, if there be sincerity and justice in his deportment, if

there be grace and judgment in his speaking; if there be constancy in his

sickness; if there be modesty in his mirth, temperance in his pleasures,

order in his domestic economy, indifference in palate, whether what he

eats or drinks be flesh or fish, wine or water:

“Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae

putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat.”

[“Who considers his own discipline, not as a vain ostentation of

science, but as a law and rule of life; and who obeys his own

decrees, and the laws he has prescribed for himself.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 4.]

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine. Zeuxidamus,

to one who asked him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit their

constitutions of chivalry to writing, and deliver them to their young men

to read, made answer, that it was because they would inure them to

action, and not amuse them with words. With such a one, after fifteen or

sixteen years’ study, compare one of our college Latinists, who has

thrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world is

nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather

prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is

embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only,

and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a

long discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five years, at

least, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle and

intricate manner let us leave all this to those who make a profession of

it.

Going one day to Orleans, I met in that plain on this side Clery, two

pedants who were travelling towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant

from one another; and, a good way further behind them, I discovered a

troop of horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, who was the late

Monsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my people inquired of the

foremost of these masters of arts, who that gentleman was that came after

him; he, having not seen the train that followed after, and thinking his

companion was meant, pleasantly answered, “He is not a gentleman; he is a

grammarian; and I am a logician.” Now we who, quite contrary, do not

here pretend to breed a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman, let us

leave them to abuse their leisure; our business lies elsewhere. Let but

our pupil be well furnished with things, words will follow but too fast;

he will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I have

observed some to make excuses, that they cannot express themselves, and

pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things,

which yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; ‘tis a mere shift,

and nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they are

nothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they

know not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not

yet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe

how they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon

conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and

that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold,

and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and

clear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue

or another, and, if he be dumb, by signs--

“Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;”

[“Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express it

soon present themselves.” (“The words will not reluctantly follow the

thing preconceived.”)--Horace, De Arte Poetica. v. 311]

And as another as poetically says in his prose:

“Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,”

[“When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves

readily.” (“When things have taken possession of the mind, the

words trip.”)--Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.]

and this other.

“Ipsae res verbs rapiunt.”

[“The things themselves force the words to express them.”

--Cicero, De Finib., iii. 5.]

He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no

more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will

give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure

shall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in

France. He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the

benevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it.

Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by the

lustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to

amuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive

diet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors

of Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes,

king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates;

who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience,

gave them this answer: “As to the exordium, I remember it not, nor

consequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns your

conclusion, I will not do what you desire:”--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the

Lacedaemonians.]--a very pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of

learned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say?

The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very great

building they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow,

offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject of

the work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people in

his favour; but the other in three words: “O Athenians, what this man

says, I will do.”--[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]--

When Cicero was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many were

struck with admiration; but Cato only laughed, saying, “We have a

pleasant (mirth-making) consul.” Let it go before, or come after, a good

sentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit

well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows

after, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think that good

rhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short long, and long short if he

will, ‘tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit and

judgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here’s a good

poet, but an ill rhymer.

“Emunctae naris, durus componere versus.”

[“Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification.”

--Horace, Sat, iv. 8.]

Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure,

“Tempora certa modosque, et, quod prius ordine verbum est,

Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis

Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae.”

[“Take away certain rhythms and measures, and make the word which

was first in order come later, putting that which should be last

first, you will still find the scattered remains of the poet.”

--Horace, Sat., i. 4, 58.]

he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will be

fine by themselves. Menander’s answer had this meaning, who being

reproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a

comedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; “It is made, and

ready,” said he, “all but the verses.”--[Plutarch, Whether the Athenians

more excelled in Arms or in Letters.]--Having contrived the subject, and

disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest.

Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy,

every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words as high, and

makes his cadences very near as harmonious as they:

“Plus sonat, quam valet.”

[“More sound than sense”--Seneca, Ep., 40.]

For the vulgar, there were never so many poetasters as now; but though

they find it no hard matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet fall

infinitely short of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and the

delicate invention of the other of these masters.

But what will become of our young gentleman, if he be attacked with the

sophistic subtlety of some syllogism? “A Westfalia ham makes a man

drink; drink quenches thirst: ergo a Westfalia ham quenches thirst.”

Why, let him laugh at it; it will be more discretion to do so, than to go

about to answer it; or let him borrow this pleasant evasion from

Aristippus: “Why should I trouble myself to untie that, which bound as

it is, gives me so much trouble?”--[Diogenes Laertius, ii. 70.]--

One offering at this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes, Chrysippus

took him short, saying, “Reserve these baubles to play with children,

and do not by such fooleries divert the serious thoughts of a man of

years.” If these ridiculous subtleties,

“Contorta et aculeata sophismata,”

as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth, they

are dangerous; but if they signify no more than only to make him laugh,

I do not see why a man need to be fortified against them. There are some

so ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word:

“Aut qui non verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus

arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant.”

[“Who do not fit words to the subject, but seek out for things

quite from the purpose to fit the words.”--Quintilian, viii. 3.]

And as another says,

“Qui, alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id,

quod non proposuerant scribere.”

[“Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word, are tempted to

something they had no intention to treat of.”--Seneca, Ep., 59.]

I for my part rather bring in a fine sentence by head and shoulders to

fit my purpose, than divert my designs to hunt after a sentence. On the

contrary, words are to serve, and to follow a man’s purpose; and let

Gascon come in play where French will not do. I would have things so

excelling, and so wholly possessing the imagination of him that hears,

that he should have something else to do, than to think of words. The

way of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing as

in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man’s self,

short and pithy, not so elegant and artificial as prompt and vehement;

“Haec demum sapiet dictio, qux feriet;”

[“That has most weight and wisdom which pierces the ear.” (“That

utterance indeed will have a taste which shall strike the ear.”)

--Epitaph on Lucan, in Fabricius, Biblioth. Lat., ii. 10.]

rather hard than wearisome; free from affectation; irregular,

incontinuous, and bold; where every piece makes up an entire body; not

like a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldier-like style,

as Suetonius calls that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no reason why he

should call it so. I have ever been ready to imitate the negligent garb,

which is yet observable amongst the young men of our time, to wear my

cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, which

seems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments, and

a contempt of the artificial; but I find this negligence of much better

use in the form of speaking. All affectation, particularly in the French

gaiety and freedom, is ungraceful in a courtier, and in a monarchy every

gentleman ought to be fashioned according to the court model; for which

reason, an easy and natural negligence does well. I no more like a web

where the knots and seams are to be seen, than a fine figure, so

delicate, that a man may tell all the bones and veins:

“Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et simplex.”

[“Let the language that is dedicated to truth be plain and

unaffected.--Seneca, Ep. 40.]

“Quis accurat loquitur, nisi qui vult putide loqui?”

[“For who studies to speak accurately, that does not at the same

time wish to perplex his auditory?”--Idem, Ep., 75.]

That eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance, that wholly

attracts us to itself. And as in our outward habit, ‘tis a ridiculous

effeminacy to distinguish ourselves by a particular and unusual garb or

fashion; so in language, to study new phrases, and to affect words that

are not of current use, proceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition.

May I be bound to speak no other language than what is spoken in the

market-places of Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was quite out, when

he reprehended Epicurus for his plain way of delivering himself, and the

design of his oratory, which was only perspicuity of speech.

The imitation of words, by its own facility, immediately disperses itself

through a whole people; but the imitation of inventing and fitly applying

those words is of a slower progress. The generality of readers, for

having found a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the same

body and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed;

the gloss, and outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most

of those I converse with, speak the same language I here write; but

whether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, says

Plato, study fulness and elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affect

brevity, and those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of conception

than the fertility of speech; and these are the best. Zeno used to say

that he had two sorts of disciples, one that he called cy-----ous,

curious to learn things, and these were his favourites; the other,

aoy---ous, that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking is

not a very good and commendable quality; but not so excellent and so

necessary as some would make it; and I am scandalised that our whole life

should be spent in nothing else. I would first understand my own

language, and that of my neighbours, with whom most of my business and

conversation lies.

No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great

use, but we buy them too dear. I will here discover one way, which has

been experimented in my own person, by which they are to be had better

cheap, and such may make use of it as will. My late father having made

the most precise inquiry that any man could possibly make amongst men of

the greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of education, was

by them cautioned of this inconvenience then in use, and made to believe,

that the tedious time we applied to the learning of the tongues of them

who had them for nothing, was the sole cause we could not arrive to the

grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks and

Romans. I do not, however, believe that to be the only cause. So it is,

that the expedient my father found out for this was, that in my infancy,

and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, who

since died a famous physician in France, totally ignorant of our

language, and very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom he

had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a great

salary for this only one end, had me continually with him; he had with

him also joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and to

relieve him; these spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to the

rest of his household, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself,

nor my mother, nor valet, nor chambermaid, should speak anything in my

company, but such Latin words as each one had learned to gabble with me.

--[These passages are, the basis of a small volume by the Abbe Mangin:

“Education de Montaigne; ou, L’Art d’enseigner le Latin a l’instar des

meres latines.”]--It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this

proved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means learned

Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a

degree as was sufficient for any necessary use; as also those of the

servants did who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it

at such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighbouring villages,

where there yet remain, that have established themselves by custom,

several Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what

concerns myself, I was above six years of age before I understood either

French or Perigordin, any more than Arabic; and without art, book,

grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that

time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no

means of mixing it up with any other. If, for example, they were to give

me a theme after the college fashion, they gave it to others in French;

but to me they were to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that which

was good. And Nicolas Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis Romanorum;

Guillaume Guerente, who wrote a comment upon Aristotle: George Buchanan,

that great Scottish poet: and Marc Antoine Muret (whom both France and

Italy have acknowledged for the best orator of his time), my domestic

tutors, have all of them often told me that I had in my infancy that

language so very fluent and ready, that they were afraid to enter into

discourse with me. And particularly Buchanan, whom I since saw attending

the late Mareschal de Brissac, then told me, that he was about to write a

treatise of education, the example of which he intended to take from

mine; for he was then tutor to that Comte de Brissac who afterward proved

so valiant and so brave a gentleman.

As to Greek, of which I have but a mere smattering, my father also

designed to have it taught me by a device, but a new one, and by way of

sport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of those who,

by certain games of tables, learn geometry and arithmetic. For he,

amongst other rules, had been advised to make me relish science and duty

by an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion, and to educate my

soul in all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint;

which he was an observer of to such a degree, even of superstition, if I

may say so, that some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the

brains of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch

them violently--and over-hastily from sleep (wherein they are much more

profoundly involved than we), he caused me to be wakened by the sound of

some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that

purpose. By this example you may judge of the rest, this alone being

sufficient to recommend both the prudence and the affection of so good a

father, who is not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits answerable to

so exquisite a culture. Of this, two things were the cause: first, a

sterile and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthful

constitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I

was, withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that they could not rouse me

from my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw clearly

enough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination and

opinions above my age. I had a slow wit that would go no faster than it

was led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and above all,

incredible defect of memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from all these

nothing considerable could be extracted. Secondly, like those who,

impatient of along and steady cure, submit to all sorts of prescriptions

and recipes, the good man being extremely timorous of any way failing in

a thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to

be overruled by the common opinions, which always follow their leader as

a flight of cranes, and complying with the method of the time, having no

more those persons he had brought out of Italy, and who had given him the

first model of education, about him, he sent me at six years of age to

the College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing in

France. And there it was not possible to add anything to the care he had

to provide me the most able tutors, with all other circumstances of

education, reserving also several particular rules contrary to the

college practice; but so it was, that with all these precautions, it was

a college still. My Latin immediately grew corrupt, of which also by

discontinuance I have since lost all manner of use; so that this new way

of education served me to no other end, than only at my first coming to

prefer me to the first forms; for at thirteen years old, that I came out

of the college, I had run through my whole course (as they call it), and,

in truth, without any manner of advantage, that I can honestly brag of,

in all this time.

The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure in

reading the fables of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; for, being about seven or

eight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them, both by

reason that this was my own natural language, the easiest book that I was

acquainted with, and for the subject, the most accommodated to the

capacity of my age: for as for the Lancelot of the Lake, the Amadis of

Gaul, the Huon of Bordeaux, and such farragos, by which children are most

delighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than I

yet know what they contain; so exact was the discipline wherein I was

brought up. But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons

that were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage,

to have to do with an understanding tutor, who very well knew discreetly

to connive at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by this

means I ran through Virgil’s AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus,

and then some Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject;

whereas had he been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion,

I do really believe, I had brought away nothing from the college but a

hatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do. But he carried

himself very discreetly in that business, seeming to take no notice, and

allowing me only such time as I could steal from my other regular

studies, which whetted my appetite to devour those books. For the chief

things my father expected from their endeavours to whom he had delivered

me for education, were affability and good-humour; and, to say the truth,

my manners had no other vice but sloth and want of metal. The fear was

not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing; nobody

prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless; they foresaw

idleness, but no malice; and I find it falls out accordingly:

The complaints I hear of myself are these: “He is idle, cold in the

offices of friendship and relation, and in those of the public, too

particular, too disdainful.” But the most injurious do not say, “Why has

he taken such a thing? Why has he not paid such an one?” but, “Why does

he part with nothing? Why does he not give?” And I should take it for a

favour that men would expect from me no greater effects of supererogation

than these. But they are unjust to exact from me what I do not owe, far

more rigorously than they require from others that which they do owe.

In condemning me to it, they efface the gratification of the action, and

deprive me of the gratitude that would be my due for it; whereas the

active well-doing ought to be of so much the greater value from my hands,

by how much I have never been passive that way at all. I can the more

freely dispose of my fortune the more it is mine, and of myself the more

I am my own. Nevertheless, if I were good at setting out my own actions,

I could, peradventure, very well repel these reproaches, and could give

some to understand, that they are not so much offended, that I do not

enough, as that I am able to do a great deal more than I do.

Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, my mind, when retired into

itself, was not altogether without strong movements, solid and clear

judgments about those objects it could comprehend, and could also,

without any helps, digest them; but, amongst other things, I do really

believe, it had been totally impossible to have made it to submit by

violence and force. Shall I here acquaint you with one faculty of my

youth? I had great assurance of countenance, and flexibility of voice

and gesture, in applying myself to any part I undertook to act: for

before--

“Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus,”

[“I had just entered my twelfth year.”--Virgil, Bucol., 39.]

I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente,

and Muret, that were presented in our College of Guienne with great

dignity: now Andreas Goveanus, our principal, as in all other parts of

his charge, was, without comparison, the best of that employment in

France; and I was looked upon as one of the best actors. ‘Tis an

exercise that I do not disapprove in young people of condition; and I

have since seen our princes, after the example of some of the ancients,

in person handsomely and commendably perform these exercises; it was even

allowed to persons of quality to make a profession of it in Greece.

“Aristoni tragico actori rem aperit: huic et genus et

fortuna honesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil tale apud

Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat.”

[“He imparted this matter to Aristo the tragedian; a man of good

family and fortune, which neither of them receive any blemish by

that profession; nothing of this kind being reputed a disparagement

in Greece.”--Livy, xxiv. 24.]

Nay, I have always taxed those with impertinence who condemn these

entertainments, and with injustice those who refuse to admit such

comedians as are worth seeing into our good towns, and grudge the people

that public diversion. Well-governed corporations take care to assemble

their citizens, not only to the solemn duties of devotion, but also to

sports and spectacles. They find society and friendship augmented by it;

and besides, can there possibly be allowed a more orderly and regular

diversion than what is performed m the sight of every one, and very often

in the presence of the supreme magistrate himself? And I, for my part,

should think it reasonable, that the prince should sometimes gratify his

people at his own expense, out of paternal goodness and affection; and

that in populous cities there should be theatres erected for such

entertainments, if but to divert them from worse and private actions.

To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite and

affections; otherwise you make nothing but so many asses laden with

books; by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful of learning to

keep; whereas, to do well you should not only lodge it with them, but

make them espouse it.