unlearned, if it be not some very few; and an authority of an English proverb, made in despite of learning, that the greatest clerks are not the wisest men. The first I answer that this want of learning hath been in good countries ruined by civil wars, or in states corrupted through wealth or too great length of peace. In the one sort men's wits were employed in their necessary defence, in the other drowned in the study of artes luxuriæ. But in all flourishing states learning hath ever flourished. If it seem strange that I account no state flourishing but that which hath neither civil wars nor too long peace, I answer, that politic bodies are like our natural bodies, and must as well have some exercise to spend their humours, as to be kept from too violent or continual outrages which spend their best spirits. The proverb I take to be made in that age when the nobility of England brought up their sons but as they entered their whelps, and thought them wise enough if they could chase their deer; and I answer it with another proverb made by a wise man, Scientia non habet inimicum præter ignorantem. All men that live are drawn either by book or example, and in books your Lordship shall find (in what course soever you propound to yourself) rules prescribed by the wisest men, and examples left by the wisest men that have lived before us. Therefore knowledge is to be sought by your private study; and opportunity you shall have to study, if you do not often remove from place to place, but stay some time and reside in the best. In the course of your study and choice of your books, you must first seek to have the grounds of learning, which are the liberal arts; for without them you shall neither gather other knowledge easily, nor make use of that you have; and then use studies of delight but sometimes for recreation, and neither drown yourself in them, nor omit those studies whereof you

are to have continual use. Above all other books be conversant in the Histories, for they will best instruct you in matter moral, military, and politic, by which and in which you must ripen and settle your judgment. In your study you are to seek two things: the first to conceive or understand; the second to lay up or remember; for as the philosopher saith, discere est tanquam recordari. To help you to conceive, you may do well in those things which you are to read to draw yourself to read with somebody that may give you help, and to that end you must either carry over with you some good general scholar, or make some abode in the universities abroad, where you may hear the professors in every art. To help you to remember, you must use writing, or meditation, or both; by writing I mean making of notes and abridgments of that which you would remember. I make conference the second help to knowledge in order, though I have found it the first and greatest in profiting, and I have so placed them because he that hath not studied knows not what to doubt nor what to ask; but when the little I had learned had taught me to find out mine own emptiness, I profited more by some expert man in half a day's conference, than by myself in a month's study. To profit much by conference, you must first choose to confer with expert men, I mean expert in that which you desire to know; next with many, for expert men will be of diverse and contrary opinions, and every one will make his own probable, so as if you hear but one you shall know in all questions but one opinion; whereas by hearing many, you shall, by seeing the reasons of one, confute the reasons of the other, and be able to judge of the truth. Besides, there is no

one man that is expert in all things, but every great scholar is expert in some one, so as your wit shall be whetted with conversing with many great wits, and you shall

have the cream and quintessence of every one of theirs. In conference be neither superstitious nor believing all you hear (what opinion soever you have of the man that delivereth it), nor too desirous to contradict. For of the first grows a facility to be led into all kind of error; since you shall ever think that he that knows all that you know, and somewhat more, hath infinite knowledge, because you cannot sound or measure it. Of the second grows such a carping humour, as you shall without reason censure all men, and want reason to censure yourself. I do conclude this point of conference with this advice, that your Lordship shall rather go a hundred miles out of the way to speak with a wise man, than five to see a fair town.

The third way to attain knowledge is observation, and not long life or seeing much; because, as he that rides a way often, and takes no care of marks or notes to direct him if he come the same again, or to make him know where he is if he come unto it, shall never prove a good guide; so he that lives long and sees much, but observes nothing, shall never prove a wise man. The use of observation is in noting the coherence of causes and effects, counsels and successes, and the proportion and likeness between nature and nature, force and force, action and action, state and state, time past and time present. The philosopher did think that all knowledge doth much depend on the knowledge of causes; as he said, id demum scimus cujus causam scimus; and therefore a private man cannot prove so great a soldier as he that commands an army, nor so great a politique as he that rules a state, because the one sees only the events and knows not the causes, the other makes the causes that govern the events. The observation of proportion or likeness between one person or one thing and another, makes nothing without

example, nor nothing new: and although exempla illustrant non probant, examples may make things plain that are proved, but prove not themselves; yet when circumstances agree, and proportion is kept, that which is probable in one case is probable in a thousand, and that which is reason once is reason ever.

SHAKESPEARE

(A. D. 1564-1616.)

THE supreme poet, not of the English race alone, but of all mankind, William Shakespeare, was born at Stratford-onAvon, in Warwickshire, England, on a day in April, 1564. The precise day is not known; but the baptism of the child, which no doubt followed birth quickly, is registered April 24th. His parents were of a modest station in English middle-class society, and it is improbable that he received more than a quite moderate education; but his genius demanded little from schools. Says James Russell Lowell: "Shakespeare was doubly fortunate. Saxon by the father and Norman by the mother, he was a representative EnglishA country boy, he learned first the rough and ready English of his rustic mates, who knew how to make nice verbs and adjectives courtesy to their needs. Going up to London, he acquired the lingua aulica precisely at the happiest moment, just as it was becoming, in the strictest sense of the word, modern. . . . Shakespeare found a language already to a certain extent established, but not yet fetlocked by dictionary and grammar mongers. What kind of culture Shakespeare had is uncertain; how much he had is disputed; that he had as much as he wanted, and of whatever kind he wanted, must be clear to whoever considers the question."

man.

About 1585 Shakespeare went from Stratford to London, and obtained some kind of employment in connection with a theatre, which led to his becoming, first, an actor, and then a writer of plays. His earliest original work as a dramatist, the comedy of "Love's Labor Lost,' was produced on the stage in 1589, when Shakespeare was twenty-five years old. This was nearly at the middle point of his life; for he died in April, 1616, at just the completion of his fifty-second year. The greatest of his works, the tragedy of "Hamlet,