No More Learning

Therefore youth ought to be
instructed betimes, and in the best things; for we hold those longest we
take soonest, as the first scent of a vessel lasts, and the tint the wool
first receives; therefore a master should temper his own powers, and
descend to the other's infirmity. If you pour a glut of water upon a
bottle, it receives little of it; but with a funnel, and by degrees, you
shall fill many of them, and spill little of your own; to their capacity
they will all receive and be full. And as it is fit to read the best
authors to youth first, so let them be of the openest and clearest.
{106a} As Livy before Sallust, Sidney before Donne; and beware of
letting them taste Gower or Chaucer at first, lest, falling too much in
love with antiquity, and not apprehending the weight, they grow rough and
barren in language only. When their judgments are firm, and out of
danger, let them read both the old and the new; but no less take heed
that their new flowers and sweetness do not as much corrupt as the
others' dryness and squalor, if they choose not carefully. Spenser, in
affecting the ancients, writ no language; yet I would have him read for
his matter, but as Virgil read Ennius. The reading of Homer and Virgil
is counselled by Quintilian as the best way of informing youth and
confirming man. For, besides that the mind is raised with the height and
sublimity of such a verse, it takes spirit from the greatness of the
matter, and is tinctured with the best things. Tragic and lyric poetry
is good, too, and comic with the best, if the manners of the reader be
once in safety. In the Greek poets, as also in Plautus, we shall see the
economy and disposition of poems better observed than in Terence; and the
latter, who thought the sole grace and virtue of their fable the sticking
in of sentences, as ours do the forcing in of jests.

_Fals. querel. fugiend. Platonis peregrinatio in Italiam_. --We should not
protect our sloth with the patronage of difficulty.
It is a false
quarrel against Nature, that she helps understanding but in a few, when
the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, if they would take
the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c. , which if they
lose, it is through their own sluggishness, and by that means become her
prodigies, not her children. I confess, Nature in children is more
patient of labour in study than in age; for the sense of the pain, the
judgment of the labour is absent; they do not measure what they have
done. And it is the thought and consideration that affects us more than
the weariness itself. Plato was not content with the learning that
Athens could give him, but sailed into Italy, for Pythagoras' knowledge:
and yet not thinking himself sufficiently informed, went into Egypt, to
the priests, and learned their mysteries. He laboured, so must we. Many
things may be learned together, and performed in one point of time; as
musicians exercise their memory, their voice, their fingers, and
sometimes their head and feet at once. And so a preacher, in the
invention of matter, election of words, composition of gesture, look,
pronunciation, motion, useth all these faculties at once: and if we can
express this variety together, why should not divers studies, at divers
hours, delight, when the variety is able alone to refresh and repair us?
As, when a man is weary of writing, to read; and then again of reading,
to write. Wherein, howsoever we do many things, yet are we (in a sort)
still fresh to what we begin; we are recreated with change, as the
stomach is with meats. But some will say this variety breeds confusion,
and makes, that either we lose all, or hold no more than the last. Why
do we not then persuade husbandmen that they should not till land, help
it with marl, lime, and compost? plant hop-gardens, prune trees, look to
bee-hives, rear sheep, and all other cattle at once? It is easier to do
many things and continue, than to do one thing long.

_Praecept. element_.