No More Learning

There lived in this
latter age six famous painters in Italy, who were excellent and emulous
of the ancients--Raphael de Urbino, Michael Angelo Buonarotti, Titian,
Antony of Correggio, Sebastian of Venice, Julio Romano, and Andrea
Sartorio.

_Parasiti ad mensam_. --These are flatterers for their bread, that praise
all my oraculous lord does or says, be it true or false; invent tales
that shall please; make baits for his lordship's ears; and if they be not
received in what they offer at, they shift a point of the compass, and
turn their tale, presently tack about, deny what they confessed, and
confess what they denied; fit their discourse to the persons and
occasions. What they snatch up and devour at one table, utter at
another; and grow suspected of the master, hated of the servants, while
they inquire, and reprehend, and compound, and dilate business of the
house they have nothing to do with. They praise my lord's wine and the
sauce he likes; observe the cook and bottle-man; while they stand in my
lord's favour, speak for a pension for them, but pound them to dust upon
my lord's least distaste, or change of his palate.

How much better is it to be silent, or at least to speak sparingly! for
it is not enough to speak good, but timely things. If a man be asked a
question, to answer; but to repeat the question before he answer is well,
that he be sure to understand it, to avoid absurdity; for it is less
dishonour to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are
excused, the understanding is not. And in things unknown to a man, not
to give his opinion, lest by the affectation of knowing too much he lose
the credit he hath, by speaking or knowing the wrong way what he utters.
Nor seek to get his patron's favour by embarking himself in the factions
of the family, to inquire after domestic simulties, their sports or
affections. They are an odious and vile kind of creatures, that fly
about the house all day, and picking up the filth of the house like pies
or swallows, carry it to their nest (the lord's ears), and oftentimes
report the lies they have feigned for what they have seen and heard.

_Imo serviles_. --These are called instruments of grace and power with
great persons, but they are indeed the organs of their impotency, and
marks of weakness. For sufficient lords are able to make these
discoveries themselves.
Neither will an honourable person inquire who
eats and drinks together, what that man plays, whom this man loves, with
whom such a one walks, what discourse they hold, who sleeps with whom.
They are base and servile natures that busy themselves about these
disquisitions. How often have I seen (and worthily) these censors of the
family undertaken by some honest rustic and cudgelled thriftily! These
are commonly the off-scouring and dregs of men that do these things, or
calumniate others; yet I know not truly which is worse--he that maligns
all, or that praises all. There is as a vice in praising, and as
frequent, as in detracting.

It pleased your lordship of late to ask my opinion touching the education
of your sons, and especially to the advancement of their studies. To
which, though I returned somewhat for the present, which rather
manifested a will in me than gave any just resolution to the thing
propounded, I have upon better cogitation called those aids about me,
both of mind and memory, which shall venture my thoughts clearer, if not
fuller, to your lordship's demand. I confess, my lord, they will seem
but petty and minute things I shall offer to you, being writ for
children, and of them. But studies have their infancy as well as
creatures. We see in men even the strongest compositions had their
beginnings from milk and the cradle; and the wisest tarried sometimes
about apting their mouths to letters and syllables. In their education,
therefore, the care must be the greater had of their beginnings, to know,
examine, and weigh their natures; which, though they be proner in some
children to some disciplines, yet are they naturally prompt to taste all
by degrees, and with change. For change is a kind of refreshing in
studies, and infuseth knowledge by way of recreation. Thence the school
itself is called a play or game, and all letters are so best taught to
scholars. They should not be affrighted or deterred in their entry, but
drawn on with exercise and emulation. A youth should not be made to hate
study before he know the causes to love it, or taste the bitterness
before the sweet; but called on and allured, entreated and praised--yea,
when he deserves it not. For which cause I wish them sent to the best
school, and a public, which I think the best.