object; but should abstain from all base pleasures, lest they should err from their end, and while they seek to better men's minds, destroy their manners. They both are born artificers, not made. Nature is more powerful in them than study.

CXIX.

De Pictura.-Whosoever loves not picture, is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient, and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always of one and the same habit: yet it doth so enter and penetrate the inmost affection (being done by an excellent artificer) as sometimes it overcomes the power of speech and oratory. There are divers graces in it; so are there in the artificers. One excels in care, another in reason, a third in easiness, a fourth in nature and grace. Some have diligence and comeliness; but they want majesty. They can express a human form in all the graces, sweetness, and elegancy; but they miss the authority. They can hit nothing but smooth cheeks; they cannot express roughness or gravity. Others aspire to truth so much, as they are rather lovers of likeness than beauty. Zeuxis and Parrhasius are said to be contemporaries: the first found out the reason of lights and shadows in picture; the other more subtlely examined the line.

CXX.

De stylo.-Pliny.-In picture light is required no less than shadow: so in style, height as well as humbleness. But beware they be not too humble; as Pliny pronounced of Regulus's writings. You would think them written not on a child, but by a child. Many, out of their own obscene apprehensions, refuse proper and fit words; as occupy, nature, and the like: so the curious industry in some of

having all alike good, hath come nearer a vice than a virtue.

CXXI.

De progres. Pictura.-Picture took her feigning from poetry; from geometry her rule, compass, lines, proportion, and the whole symmetry. Parrhasius was the first won reputation, by adding symmetry to picture he added subtlety to the countenance, elegancy to the hair, love-lines to the face, and by the public voice of all artificers, deserved honour in the outer lines. Eupompus gave it splendor by numbers, and other elegancies. From the optics it drew reasons, by which it considered how things placed at distance, and afar off, should appear less: how above or beneath the head should deceive the eye, &c. So from thence it took shadows, recessor, light, and heightnings. From moral philosophy it took the soul, the expression of senses, perturbations, manners, when they would paint an angry person, a proud, an inconstant, an ambitious, a brave, a magnanimous, a just, a merciful, a compassionate, an humble, a dejected, a base, and the like; they made all heightnings bright, all shadows dark, all swellings from a plane, all solids from breaking. See where he complains of their painting Chimeras, by the vulgar unaptly called grotesque: saying, that men who were born truly to study and emulate nature, did nothing but make monsters against nature, which Horace so laughed at.a The art plastic was moulding in clay, or potters' earth anciently. This is the parent of statuary, sculpture, graving, and picture; cutting in brass and marble, all serve under her.

y Parrhasius. Eupompus. Socrates. Parrhasius. Clito. Polygnotus. Aglaophon. Zeuxis. Parrhasius. Raphael de Urbino. Mich. Angelo Buonarota. Titian. Antony de Correg. Sebast. de Venet. Julio Romano. Andrea Sartorio.

2 Plin. lib. xxxv. c. 2, 5, 6 and 7. Vitruv. lib. viii. and 7. a Horat. in Arte Poet.

Socrates taught Parrhasius, and Clito (two noble statuaries) first to express manners by their looks in imagery. Polygnotus and Aglaophon, were ancienter. After them Zeuxis, who was the law-giver to all painters; after, Parrhasius. They were contemporaries, and lived both about Philip's time, the father of Alexander the Great. There lived in this latter age six famous painters in Italy, who were excellent and emulous of the ancients; Raphael de Urbino, Michael Angelo Buonarota, Titian, Antony of Correggio, Sebastian of Venice, Julio Romano, and Andrea Sartorio.

CXXII.

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 enquire, and reprehend, and compound, and delate 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 enquire 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 often-times 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 enquire who eats and drinks together, what that man plays, whom this man loves, with whom such a one walks, what discourse they held, 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-scowering 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 great 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 syllabes. 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, intreated 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. Your lordship, I fear, hardly hears of that, as willing to breed them in your eye, and at home, and doubting their manners may be corrupted abroad. They are in more danger in your own family, among ill servants (allowing they be safe in their school-master) than amongst a thousand boys, however immodest. Would we did not spoil our own children, and overthrow their