ments that came out of the court, yet this bold misorder was winked at, and borne within the court. I thought it was not well, that some great ones of the court durst declare themselves offended with good men of London for doing their duty, and the good ones of the court would not show themselves offended with ill men of London for breaking good order. I found thereby a saying of Socrates to be most true, "That ill men be more hasty, than good men forward, to prosecute their purposes;" even as Christ himself saith of the children of light and darkness. Beside apparel, in all other things too, not so much good laws and strait commandments, as the example and manner of great men, doth carry all mean men every where to like, and love, and do, as they do. For if but two or three noblemen in the court would but begin to shoot, all young gentlemen, the whole court, all London, the whole realm, would straightway exercise shooting. What praise should they win to themselves? what commodity should they bring to their country, that would thus deserve to be pointed at, "Behold, there goeth the author of good order, the guide of good men?" I could say more, and yet not overmuch. But perchance some will say I have stept too far out of my school into the commonwealth'; from teaching a young scholar, to monish great and noble men: yet I trust good and wise men will think and judge of me, that my mind was not so much to be busy and bold with them that be great now, as to give true advice to them that may be great hereafter; who, if they do as I wish them to do, how great soever they be now by blood and other men's means, they shall become a great deal greater hereafter by learning, virtue, and their own deserts; "which is true * Men of true worth and excellency, as they justly challenge all due respect, so they draw the eyes of the world after them wherever they go. Demosthenes never appeared in public, but he was marked out by the admiring multitude as he passed along, one crying to another, Οὗτος ἐκεῖνος. Το this Lucian alludes in his Dream: Τοιαῦτά σοι περιθήσω τὰ γνωρίσματα, ὥστε τῶν ὁρώντων ἕκαστος τὸν πλησίον κινήσας, δείξει σε τῷ δακτύλῳ, Οὗτος ἐκεῖνος, λέγων. This Horace expresses with some satisfaction, as being his own case: "Totum muneris hoc tui est, Quòd monstror digito prætereuntium praise, right worthiness, and very nobility indeed." Yet, if some will needs press me that I am too bold with great men, and stray too far from my matter, I will answer them with St. Paul, Sive per contentionem, sive quocunque modo, modo Christus prædicetur, &c. Even so, where in place or out of place, with my matter or beside my matter, if I can hereby either provoke the good or stay the ill, I shall think my writing herein well employed. But to come down from great inen and higher matters, to my little children and poor schoolhouse again; I will, God willing, go forward orderly, as I purposed, to instruct children and young men both for learning and manners. Hitherto I have showed what harm overmuch fear bringeth to children; and what hurt ill company and overmuch liberty breedeth in youth; meaning thereby, that from seven year old to seventeen, love is the best allurement to learning; from seventeen to seven-and-twenty, that wise men should carefully see the steps of youth surely staid by good order, in that most slippery time, and especially in the court, a place most dangerous for youth to live in, without great grace, good regard, and diligently looking to. Sir Richard Sackville, that worthy gentleman of worthy memory, as I said in the beginning, in the Queen's privy chamber at Windsor, after he had talked with me for the right choice of a good wit in a child for learning, and of the true difference betwixt quick and hard wits, of alluring young children by gentleness to love learning, and of the special care that was to be had to keep young men from licentious living; he was most earnest with me, to have me say my mind also, what I thought concerning the fancy that many young gentlemen of England have to travel abroad, and namely to lead a long life in Italy. His request, both for his authority and good will toward me, was a sufficient commandment unto me, to satisfy his pleasure with uttering plainly my opinion in that matter. Sir," quoth I, take going thither, and living there, for a young gentleman that doth not go under the keep and guard of such a man, as both by wisdom can, and authority dare rule him, to be marvellous dangerous." 66 66 I And why I said so then, I will declare at large now, which I said then privately, and write now openly; not because I do contemn either the knowledge of strange and divers tongues, and namely the Italian tongue (which, next the Greek and Latin tongue, I like and love above all other), or else because I do despise the learning that is gotten, or the experience that is gathered in strange countries; or for any private malice that I bear to Italy; which country, and in it namely Rome, I have always specially honoured; because time was, when Italy and Rome have been to the great good of us that now live, the best breeders and bringers up of the worthiest men, not only for wise speaking, but also for well doing, in all civil affairs, that ever was in the world. But now that time is gone; and though the place remain, yet the old and present manners do differ as far as black and white, as virtue and vice. Virtue once made that country mistress over all the world; vice now maketh that country slave to them that before were glad to serve it. All men see it; they themselves confess it, namely such as be best and wisest amongst them. For sin, by lust and vanity, hath and doth breed up every where, common contempt of God's word, private contention in many families, open factions in every city; and so making themselves bond to vanity and vice at home, they are content to bear the yoke of serving strangers abroad. Italy now, is not that Italy that it was wont to be; and therefore now not so fit a place as some do count it, for young men to fetch either wisdom or honesty from thence. For surely they will make others but bad scholars, that be so ill masters to themselves. Yet, if a gentleman will needs travel into Italy, he shall do well to look to the life of the wisest traveller that ever travelled thither, set out by the wisest writer that ever spake with tongue, God's doctrine only excepted; and that is Ulysses in Homer. Ulysses and his travel I wish our travellers to look upon, not so much to fear them with the great dangers that he many times suffered, as to instruct them with his excellent wisdom, which he always and every where used. Yea, even those that be learned and witty travellers, when they be disposed to praise travelling, as a great commendation, and the best scripture they have for it, they gladly recite the third verse of Homer, in his first book of the Odyssey, containing a *The first three verses of Homer's Odyssey: "Ανδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ great praise of Ulysses, for the wit he gathered and wisdom he used in his travelling. Which verse, because in mine opinion it was not made at the first more naturally in Greek by Homer, nor after turned more aptly into Latin by Horace, than it was a good while ago in Cambridge translated into English, both plainly for the sense and roundly for the verse, by one of the best scholars that ever St. John's College bred, Mr. Watson, mine old friend, sometime bishop of Lincoln: therefore for their sake, that have lust to see how our English tongue in avoiding barbarous rhiming, may as well receive right quantity of syllables and true order of versifying, (of which matter more at large hereafter,) as either Greek or Latin, if a cunning man have the handling; I will set forth that one verse in all three tongues, for an example to good wits, that shall delight in like learned exercise. Πολλῶν δ ̓ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα, καὶ νόον ἔγνω. Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes. All travellers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses, 6 And yet is not Ulysses commended so much; nor so oft in Homer, because he was TоAUTρoos, this is, skilful in many men's manners and fashions; as because he was ToλúμNTIS, that is, wise in all purposes, and wary in all places.' Which wisdom and wariness will not serve never a traveller, except Pallas be always at his elbow, that is God's special grace from heaven, to keep him in God's fear in all his doings, in all his journey. For he shall not always, in his absence out of England, light upon a gentle Alcinous, and walk in his fair gardens full of all harmless pleasures; but he shall sometimes fall either into the hands of some cruel Cyclops, or into the lap of some wanton and dallying dame, Calypso; and so suffer the danger of many a deadly den, not so full of perils to destroy the body, as full of vain pleasures to poison the mind. Some Siren shall sing him a song, sweet in tune, but sounding in the end to his utter destruction. If Scylla drown him not, Charybdis may fortune to swallow him. Some Circe shall make him, of a plain Englishman, a right Italian: and at length to hell, or to some hellish place is he likely to go; from whence is hard returning, although one Ulysses, and that by Pallas's aid, and good counsel of Tiresias, once escaped that horrible den of deadly darkness. Therefore, if wise men will needs send their sons into Italy, let them do it wisely, under the keep and guard of him who, by his wisdom and honesty, by his example and authority, may be able to keep them safe and sound in the fear of God, in Christ's true religion, in good order, and honesty of living; except they will have them run headlong into over-many jeopardies, as Ulysses had done many times, if Pallas had not always governed him; if he had not used to stop his ears with wax, to bind himself to the mast of his ship, to feed daily upon that sweet herb Moly, *with the black root and white flower, given unto him by Mercury to avoid all the enchantments of Circe. Whereby the divine poet Homer meant covertly (as wise and godly men do judge) that love of honesty and hatred of ill, which David more plainly doth call the fear of God, the only remedy against all enchantments of sin. I know divers noble personages, and many worthy gentlemen of England, whom all the Siren songs of Italy could never untwine from the mast of God's Word, nor no enchantment of vanity overturn them from the fear of God and love of honesty. But I know as many, or more, and some sometime my dear friends (for whose sake I hate going into that country the more), who parting out of England fervent in the love of Christ's doctrine, and well furnished with the fear of God, returned out of Italy worse transformed than ever was any in Circe's court. I know divers, that went out of England men of innocent life, men of excellent learning, who returned out of Italy, not only with worse manners, but also with less learning; neither so willing to live orderly, nor yet so able to speak learnedly, as they were at home, before they went abroad. And why? Plato, that wise writer, and worthy traveller himself, telleth the cause why he went into Sicily, a country no nigher Italy by site of place, than Italy that is now, is like Sicily that was then, in all corrupt manners and * Odyss. x. ver. 304. Ρίζῃ μὲν μέλαν ἔσκε, γάλακτι δὲ εἴκελον ἄνθος. |