is their action and gesture. Fulgosus, l. 8, c. 7, makes mention how
Th. Aquinas supping with king Lewis of France, upon a sudden knocked
his fist upon the table, and cried, conclusum est contra Manichaeos,
his wits were a wool-gathering, as they say, and his head busied about
other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much [1994]abashed.
Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found out
the means to know how much gold was mingled with the silver in king
Hieron's crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cried ἕυρηκα, I have
found: [1995]and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never
perceived what was done about him: when the city was taken, and the
soldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it. St.
Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where
he was, Marullus, lib. 2, cap. 4. It was Democritus's carriage alone
that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for
Hippocrates to cure him: if he had been in any solemn company, he would
upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much of
Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus
Lampsacus, because he ran like a madman, [1996]saying, he came from
hell as a spy, to tell the devils what mortal men did. Your greatest
students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward
behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no whit experienced in
worldly business; they can measure the heavens, range over the world,
teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and contracts they are
circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fools? and how
should they be otherwise, but as so many sots in schools, when (as
[1997]he well observed) they neither hear nor see such things as are
commonly practised abroad? how should they get experience, by what
means? [1998]I knew in my time many scholars, saith Aeneas Sylvius (in
an epistle of his to Gasper Scitick, chancellor to the emperor),
excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common
civility, nor knew how to manage their domestic or public affairs.
Paglarensis was amazed, and said his farmer had surely cozened him,
when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs, and his ass had
but one foal. To say the best of this profession, I can give no other
testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; [1999]He is
yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so
sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright,
innocent, plain-dealing men.
Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and
inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, &c. Jo. Voschius would
have good scholars to be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary
respect above other men, to have greater [2000]privileges than the
rest, that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the
public good. But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from
respecting the muses, and giving that honour to scholars, or reward
which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of
many noble princes, that after all their pains taken in the
universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious
tasks, wearisome days, dangers, hazards, (barred interim from all
pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives) if
they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected,
contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts,
exposed to want, poverty, and beggary. Their familiar attendants are,
[2001]Pallentes morbi, luctus, curaeque laborque
Et metus, et malesuada fames, et turpis egestas,
Terribiles visu formae———
Grief, labour, care, pale sickness, miseries,
Fear, filthy poverty, hunger that cries,
Terrible monsters to be seen with eyes.
If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone
were enough to make them all melancholy. Most other trades and
professions, after some seven years' apprenticeship, are enabled by
their craft to live of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at
sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he
likely makes a saving voyage. An husbandman's gains are almost certain;
quibus ipse Jupiter nocere non potest (whom Jove himself can't harm)
('tis [2002]Cato's hyperbole, a great husband himself); only scholars
methinks are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties,
and hazards. For first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all
are not capable and docile, [2003]ex omniligno non fit Mercurius: we
can make majors and officers every year, but not scholars: kings can
invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed;
universities can give degrees; and Tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse
potest; but he nor they, nor all the world, can give learning, make
philosophers, artists, orators, poets; we can soon say, as Seneca well
notes, O virum bonum, o divitem, point at a rich man, a good, a happy
man, a prosperous man, sumptuose vestitum, Calamistratum, bene olentem,
magno temporis impendio constat haec laudatio, o virum literarum, but
'tis not so easily performed to find out a learned man. Learning is not
so quickly got, though they may be willing to take pains, to that end
sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their patrons and
parents, yet few can compass it. Or if they be docile, yet all men's
wills are not answerable to their wits, they can apprehend, but will
not take pains; they are either seduced by bad companions, vel in
puellam impingunt, vel in poculum (they fall in with women or wine) and
so spend their time to their friends' grief and their own undoings. Or
put case they be studious, industrious, of ripe wits, and perhaps good
capacities, then how many diseases of body and mind must they
encounter? No labour in the world like unto study. It may be, their
temperature will not endure it, but striving to be excellent to know
all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life and all. Let him yet happily
escape all these hazards, aereis intestinis with a body of brass, and
is now consummate and ripe, he hath profited in his studies, and
proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for
preferment, where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he was
(after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the
University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready?
The most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to
teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have
falconer's wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small
stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they
approve him not (for usually they do but a year or two) as inconstant,
as [2004]they that cried Hosanna one day, and Crucify him the other;
serving-man-like, he must go look a new master; if they do, what is his
reward?
[2005]Hoc quoque te manet ut pueros elementa docentem
Occupet extremis in vicis alba senectus.
At last thy snow-white age in suburb schools,
Shall toil in teaching boys their grammar rules.
Like an ass, he wears out his time for provender, and can show a stump
rod, togam tritam et laceram saith [2006]Haedus, an old torn gown, an
ensign of his infelicity, he hath his labour for his pain, a modicum to
keep him till he be decrepit, and that is all. Grammaticus non est
felix, &c. If he be a trencher chaplain in a gentleman's house, as it
befell [2007] Euphormio, after some seven years' service, he may
perchance have a living to the halves, or some small rectory with the
mother of the maids at length, a poor kinswoman, or a cracked
chambermaid, to have and to hold during the time of his life. But if he
offend his good patron, or displease his lady mistress in the mean
time,
[2008]Ducetur Planta velut ictus ab Hercule Cacus,
Poneturque foras, si quid tentaverit unquam
Hiscere———
as Hercules did by Cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the
heels, away with him. If he bend his forces to some other studies, with
an intent to be a secretis to some nobleman, or in such a place with an
ambassador, he shall find that these persons rise like apprentices one
under another, and in so many tradesmen's shops, when the master is
dead, the foreman of the shop commonly steps in his place. Now for
poets, rhetoricians, historians, philosophers, [2009]mathematicians,
sophisters, &c.; they are like grasshoppers, sing they must in summer,
and pine in the winter, for there is no preferment for them. Even so
they were at first, if you will believe that pleasant tale of Socrates,
which he told fair Phaedrus under a plane-tree, at the banks of the
river Iseus; about noon when it was hot, and the grasshoppers made a
noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him a tale, how grasshoppers
were once scholars, musicians, poets, &c., before the Muses were born,
and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause were turned by
Jupiter into grasshoppers. And may be turned again, In Tythoni Cicadas,
aut Lyciorum ranas, for any reward I see they are like to have: or else
in the mean time, I would they could live, as they did, without any
viaticum, like so many [2010]manucodiatae, those Indian birds of
paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that live with the air
and dew of heaven, and need no other food; for being as they are, their
[2011]rhetoric only serves them to curse their bad fortunes, and many
of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from grasshoppers
they turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses,
mules, to satisfy their hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat.
To say truth, 'tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile
and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their
respectless patrons, as [2012]Cardan doth, as [2013]Xilander and many
others: and which is too common in those dedicatory epistles, for hope
of gain, to lie, flatter, and with hyperbolical eulogiums and
commendations, to magnify and extol an illiterate unworthy idiot, for
his excellent virtues, whom they should rather, as [2014]Machiavel
observes, vilify, and rail at downright for his most notorious
villainies and vices. So they prostitute themselves as fiddlers, or
mercenary tradesmen, to serve great men's turns for a small reward.
They are like [2015]Indians, they have store of gold, but know not the
worth of it: for I am of Synesius's opinion, [2016]King Hieron got more
by Simonides' acquaintance, than Simonides did by his; they have their
best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when
they have done well, their honour and immortality from us: we are the
living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fames: what
was Achilles without Homer? Alexander without Arian and Curtius? who
had known the Caesars, but for Suetonius and Dion?
[2017]Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi: sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
Before great Agamemnon reign'd,
Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave,
Whose huge ambition's now contain'd
In the small compass of a grave:
In endless night, they sleep, unwept, unknown,
No bard they had to make all time their own.
they are more beholden to scholars, than scholars to them; but they
undervalue themselves, and so by those great men are kept down. Let
them have that encyclopaedian, all the learning in the world; they must
keep it to themselves, [2018]live in base esteem, and starve, except
they will submit, as Budaeus well hath it, so many good parts, so many
ensigns of arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate
potentate, and live under his insolent worship, or honour, like
parasites, Qui tanquam mures alienum panem comedunt. For to say truth,
artes hae, non sunt Lucrativae, as Guido Bonat that great astrologer
could foresee, they be not gainful arts these, sed esurientes et
famelicae, but poor and hungry.
[2019]Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores,
Sed genus et species cogitur ire pedes:
The rich physician, honour'd lawyers ride,
Whilst the poor scholar foots it by their side.
Poverty is the muses' patrimony, and as that poetical divinity teacheth
us, when Jupiter's daughters were each of them married to the gods, the
muses alone were left solitary, Helicon forsaken of all suitors, and I
believe it was, because they had no portion.
Calliope longum caelebs cur vixit in aevum?
Nempe nihil dotis, quod numeraret, erat.
Why did Calliope live so long a maid?
Because she had no dowry to be paid.
Ever since all their followers are poor, forsaken and left unto
themselves. Insomuch, that as [2020]Petronius argues, you shall likely
know them by their clothes. There came, saith he, by chance into my
company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by
that note alone he was a scholar, whom commonly rich men hate: I asked
him what he was, he answered, a poet: I demanded again why he was so
ragged, he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich.
[2021]Qui Pelago credit, magno se faenore tollit,
Qui pugnas et rostra petit, praecingitur auro:
Vilis adulator picto jacet ebrius ostro,
Sola pruinosis horret facundia pannis.
A merchant's gain is great, that goes to sea;
A soldier embossed all in gold;
A flatterer lies fox'd in brave array;
A scholar only ragged to behold.
All which our ordinary students, right well perceiving in the
universities, how unprofitable these poetical, mathematical, and
philosophical studies are, how little respected, how few patrons; apply
themselves in all haste to those three commodious professions of law,
physic, and divinity, sharing themselves between them, [2022]rejecting
these arts in the mean time, history, philosophy, philology, or lightly
passing them over, as pleasant toys fitting only table-talk, and to
furnish them with discourse. They are not so behoveful: he that can
tell his money hath arithmetic enough: he is a true geometrician, can
measure out a good fortune to himself; a perfect astrologer, that can
cast the rise and fall of others, and mark their errant motions to his
own use. The best optics are, to reflect the beams of some great man's
favour and grace to shine upon him. He is a good engineer that alone
can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common tenet and
practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed not long since, in the first
book of his history; their universities were generally base, not a
philosopher, a mathematician, an antiquary, &c., to be found of any
note amongst them, because they had no set reward or stipend, but every
man betook himself to divinity, hoc solum in votis habens, opimum
sacerdotium, a good parsonage was their aim. This was the practice of
some of our near neighbours, as [2023]Lipsius inveighs, they thrust
their children to the study of law and divinity, before they be
informed aright, or capable of such studies. Scilicet omnibus artibus
antistat spes lucri, et formosior est cumulus auri, quam quicquid
Graeci Latinique delirantes scripserunt. Ex hoc numero deinde veniunt
ad gubernacula reipub. intersunt et praesunt consiliis regum, o pater,
o patria? so he complained, and so may others. For even so we find, to
serve a great man, to get an office in some bishop's court (to practise
in some good town) or compass a benefice, is the mark we shoot at, as
being so advantageous, the highway to preferment.
Although many times, for aught I can see, these men fail as often as
the rest in their projects, and are as usually frustrate of their
hopes. For let him be a doctor of the law, an excellent civilian of
good worth, where shall he practise and expatiate? Their fields are so
scant, the civil law with us so contracted with prohibitions, so few
causes, by reason of those all-devouring municipal laws, quibus nihil
illiteratius, saith [2024] Erasmus, an illiterate and a barbarous
study, (for though they be never so well learned in it, I can hardly
vouchsafe them the name of scholars, except they be otherwise
qualified) and so few courts are left to that profession, such slender
offices, and those commonly to be compassed at such dear rates, that I
know not how an ingenious man should thrive amongst them. Now for
physicians, there are in every village so many mountebanks, empirics,
quacksalvers, Paracelsians, as they call themselves, Caucifici et
sanicidae so [2025]Clenard terms them, wizards, alchemists, poor
vicars, cast apothecaries, physicians' men, barbers, and good wives,
professing great skill, that I make great doubt how they shall be
maintained, or who shall be their patients. Besides, there are so many
of both sorts, and some of them such harpies, so covetous, so
clamorous, so impudent; and as [2026]he said, litigious idiots,
Quibus loquacis affatim arrogantiae est
Pentiae parum aut nihil,
Nec ulla mica literarii salis,
Crumenimulga natio:
Loquuteleia turba, litium strophae,
Maligna litigantium cohors, togati vultures,
Lavernae alumni, Agyrtae, &c.
Which have no skill but prating arrogance,
No learning, such a purse-milking nation:
Gown'd vultures, thieves, and a litigious rout
Of cozeners, that haunt this occupation,
that they cannot well tell how to live one by another, but as he jested
in the Comedy of Clocks, they were so many, [2027]major pars populi
arida reptant fame, they are almost starved a great part of them, and
ready to devour their fellows, [2028]Et noxia callidilate se corripere,
such a multitude of pettifoggers and empirics, such impostors, that an
honest man knows not in what sort to compose and behave himself in
their society, to carry himself with credit in so vile a rout,
scientiae nomen, tot sumptibus partum et vigiliis, profiteri dispudeat,
postquam, &c.
Last of all to come to our divines, the most noble profession and
worthy of double honour, but of all others the most distressed and
miserable. If you will not believe me, hear a brief of it, as it was
not many years since publicly preached at Paul's cross, [2029]by a
grave minister then, and now a reverend bishop of this land: We that
are bred up in learning, and destinated by our parents to this end, we
suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam
tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of
martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live of the college
allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, παν τῶν ἐνδεῖς πλὴν
λιμοὺ καὶ φόβου, needy of all things but hunger and fear, or if we be
maintained but partly by our parents' cost, do expend in unnecessary
maintenance, books and degrees, before we come to any perfection, five
hundred pounds, or a thousand marks. If by this price of the expense of
time, our bodies and spirits, our substance and patrimonies, we cannot
purchase those small rewards, which are ours by law, and the right of
inheritance, a poor parsonage, or a vicarage of 50_l._ per annum, but
we must pay to the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and out-worn
life) either in annual pension, or above the rate of a copyhold, and
that with the hazard and loss of our souls, by simony and perjury, and
the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferments, in esse and posse,
both present and to come. What father after a while will be so
improvident to bring up his son to his great charge, to this necessary
beggary? What Christian will be so irreligious, to bring up his son in
that course of life, which by all probability and necessity, cogit ad
turpia, enforcing to sin, will entangle him in simony and perjury, when
as the poet said, Invitatus ad haec aliquis de ponte negabit: a
beggar's brat taken from the bridge where he sits a begging, if he knew
the inconvenience, had cause to refuse it. This being thus, have not we
fished fair all this while, that are initiate divines, to find no
better fruits of our labours, [2030] hoc est cur palles, cur quis non
prandeat hoc est? do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we
rise so early all the year long? [2031]Leaping (as he saith) out of our
beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a thunderclap. If
this be all the respect, reward and honour we shall have, [2032]frange
leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos: let us give over our books,
and betake ourselves to some other course of life; to what end should
we study? [2033]Quid me litterulas stulti docuere parentes, what did
our parents mean to make us scholars, to be as far to seek of
preferment after twenty years' study, as we were at first: why do we
take such pains? Quid tantum insanis juvat impallescere chartis? If
there be no more hope of reward, no better encouragement, I say again,
Frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos; let's turn soldiers,
sell our books, and buy swords, guns, and pikes, or stop bottles with
them, turn our philosopher's gowns, as Cleanthes once did, into
millers' coats, leave all and rather betake ourselves to any other
course of life, than to continue longer in this misery. [2034]Praestat
dentiscalpia radere, quam literariis monumentis magnatum favorem
emendicare.
Yea, but methinks I hear some man except at these words, that though
this be true which I have said of the estate of scholars, and
especially of divines, that it is miserable and distressed at this
time, that the church suffers shipwreck of her goods, and that they
have just cause to complain; there is a fault, but whence proceeds it?
If the cause were justly examined, it would be retorted upon ourselves,
if we were cited at that tribunal of truth, we should be found guilty,
and not able to excuse it That there is a fault among us, I confess,
and were there not a buyer, there would not be a seller; but to him
that will consider better of it, it will more than manifestly appear,
that the fountain of these miseries proceeds from these griping
patrons. In accusing them, I do not altogether excuse us; both are
faulty, they and we: yet in my judgment, theirs is the greater fault,
more apparent causes and much to be condemned. For my part, if it be
not with me as I would, or as it should, I do ascribe the cause, as
[2035]Cardan did in the like case; meo infortunio potius quam illorum
sceleri, to [2036]mine own infelicity rather than their naughtiness:
although I have been baffled in my time by some of them, and have as
just cause to complain as another: or rather indeed to mine own
negligence; for I was ever like that Alexander in [2037]Plutarch,
Crassus his tutor in philosophy, who, though he lived many years
familiarly with rich Crassus, was even as poor when from, (which many
wondered at) as when he came first to him; he never asked, the other
never gave him anything; when he travelled with Crassus he borrowed a
hat of him, at his return restored it again. I have had some such noble
friends' acquaintance and scholars, but most part (common courtesies
and ordinary respects excepted) they and I parted as we met, they gave
me as much as I requested, and that was—And as Alexander ab Alexandro
Genial. dier. l. 6. c. 16. made answer to Hieronymus Massainus, that
wondered, quum plures ignavos et ignobiles ad dignitates et sacerdotia
promotos quotidie videret, when other men rose, still he was in the
same state, eodem tenore et fortuna cui mercedem laborum studiorumque
deberi putaret, whom he thought to deserve as well as the rest. He made
answer, that he was content with his present estate, was not ambitious,
and although objurgabundus suam segnitiem accusaret, cum obscurae
sortis homines ad sacerdotia et pontificatus evectos, &c., he chid him
for his backwardness, yet he was still the same: and for my part
(though I be not worthy perhaps to carry Alexander's books) yet by some
overweening and well-wishing friends, the like speeches have been used
to me; but I replied still with Alexander, that I had enough, and more
peradventure than I deserved; and with Libanius Sophista, that rather
chose (when honours and offices by the emperor were offered unto him)
to be talis Sophista, quam tails Magistratus. I had as lief be still
Democritus junior, and privus privatus, si mihi jam daretur optio, quam
talis fortasse Doctor, talis Dominus.—Sed quorsum haec? For the rest
'tis on both sides facinus detestandum, to buy and sell livings, to
detain from the church, that which God's and men's laws have bestowed
on it; but in them most, and that from the covetousness and ignorance
of such as are interested in this business; I name covetousness in the
first place, as the root of all these mischiefs, which, Achan-like,
compels them to commit sacrilege, and to make simoniacal compacts, (and
what not) to their own ends, [2038]that kindles God's wrath, brings a
plague, vengeance, and a heavy visitation upon themselves and others.
Some out of that insatiable desire of filthy lucre, to be enriched,
care not how they come by it per fas et nefas, hook or crook, so they
have it. And others when they have with riot and prodigality embezzled
their estates, to recover themselves, make a prey of the church,
robbing it, as [2039]Julian the apostate did, spoil parsons of their
revenues (in keeping half back, [2040]as a great man amongst us
observes:) and that maintenance on which they should live: by means
whereof, barbarism is increased, and a great decay of Christian
professors: for who will apply himself to these divine studies, his
son, or friend, when after great pains taken, they shall have nothing
whereupon to live? But with what event do they these things?
[2041]Opesque totis viribus venamini
At inde messis accidit miserrima.