3. Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure. When thou pennest an oration, let him have the power of index expurgatorius, to expunge what he pleaseth; and do not thou, like a fond mother, cry if the child of thy brain be corrected for playing the wanton. Mark the arguments and reasons of his alterations; why that phrase least proper, this passage more cautious and advised; and after a while thou shalt perform the place in thine own person, and not go out of thyself for a censurer. If thy fancy be too low and humble,

4. Let thy judgment be king, but not tyrant over it, to condemn harmless, yea, commendable, conceits. Some for fear their orations should giggle, will not let them smile. Give it also liberty to rove, for it will not be extravagant. There is no danger that weak folks, if they walk abroad, will straggle far, as wanting strength.

5. Acquaint thyself with reading poets, for there fancy is in her throne; and in time, the sparks of the author's wit will catch hold on the reader, and inflame him with love, liking, and desire of imitation. I confess there is more required to teach one to write than to see a copy: however, there is a secret force of fascination in reading poems to raise and provoke fancy. If thy fancy be over voluble, then

6. Whip this vagrant home to the first object whereon it should be settled. Indeed, nimbleness is the perfection of this faculty, but levity the bane of it. Great is the difference between a swift horse and a skittish, that will stand on no ground. Such is the ubiquitary fancy, which will keep long residence on no one subject, but is so courteous to strangers, that it ever welcomes that conceit most which comes last; and new species supplant the old ones, before seriously considered. If this be the fault of thy fancy, I say whip

it home to the first object whereon it should be settled. This do as often as occasion requires, and by degrees the fugitive servant will learn to abide by his work without running away.

7. Acquaint thyself by degrees with hard and knotty studies, as school-divinity, which will clog thy overnimble fancy. True, at the first it will be as welcome to thee as a prison, and their very solutions will seem knots unto thee. But take not too much at once, lest thy brain turn edge. Taste it first as a potion for physic, and by degrees thou shalt drink it as beer for thirst: practice will make it pleasant. Mathematics are also good for this purpose. If beginning to try a conclusion, thou must make an end, lest thou losest thy pains that are past, and must proceed seriously and exactly. I meddle not with those bedlam-fancies, all whose conceits are antiques, but leave them for the physician to purge with hellebore.

8. To clothe low-creeping matter with high-flown language is not fine fancy, but flat foolery. It rather loads than raises a wren, to fasten the feathers of an estridge to her wings. Some men's speeches are like the high mountains in Ireland, having a dirty bog in the top of them: the very ridge of them in high words having nothing of worth, but what rather stalls than delights the auditor.

9. Fine fancies in manufactures invent engines rather pretty than useful; and commonly one trade is too narrow for them. They are better to project new ways than to prosecute old, and are rather skilful in many mysteries, than thriving in one. They affect not voluminous inventions, wherein many years must constantly be spent to perfect them, except there be in them variety of pleasant employment.

10. Imagination, the work of the fancy, hath pro

duced real effects. Many serious and sad examples hereof may be produced: I will only insist on a merry one. A gentleman having led a company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to be weary, and jointly cried to him to carry them; which, because of their multitude, he could not do, but told them he would provide them horses to ride on. Then cutting little wands out of the hedge as nags for them, and a great stake as a gelding for himself, thus mounted, fancy put metal into their legs, and they came cheerfully home.

11. Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience drives it. One that owed much money, and had many creditors, as he walked London streets in the evening, a tenter-hook catched his cloak. At whose suit? said he, conceiving some bailiff had arrested him. Thus guilty consciences are afraid where no fear is, and count every creature they meet a sergeant sent from God to punish them.

OF BOOKS

Solomon saith truly, Of making many books there is no end, so insatiable is the thirst of men therein: as also endless is the desire of many in buying and reading them. But we come to our rules.

1. It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning, by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well furnished armory. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many of them, built merely for uniformity, are without chimneys, and more without fires. Once a dunce 1 Ecclesiastes, xii, 12.

void of learning but full of books flouted a libraryless scholar with these words: Salve, doctor sine libris. But the next day the scholar coming into this jeerer's study, crowded with books; Salvete libri, saith he, sine doctore.

2. Few books, well selected, are best. Yet, as a certain fool bought all the pictures that came out, because he might have his choice, such is the vain humor of many men in gathering of books: yet when they have done all, they miss their end, it being in the editions of authors as in the fashions of clothes, when a man thinks he hath gotten the latest and newest, presently another newer comes out.

3. Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of. Namely first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look through them; and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.

4. The genius of the author is commonly discovered in the dedicatory epistle. Many place the purest grain in the mouth of the sack for chapmen to handle or buy: and from the dedication one may probably guess at the work, saving some rare and peculiar exceptions. Thus, when once a gentleman admired how so pithy, learned and witty a dedication was matched to a flat, dull, foolish book; In truth, said another, they may be

well matched together, for I profess they are nothing Eakin.

5. Proportion an hour's meditation to an hour's reading of a staple author. This makes a man master of his learning, and dispirits the book into the scholar. The king of Sweden never filed his men above six deep in one company, because he would not have them lie in useless clusters in his army, but so that every particular soldier might be drawn out into service. Books that stand thin on the shelves, yet so as the owner of them can bring forth every one of them into use, are better than far greater libraries.

6. Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost. Arius Montanus, in printing the Hebrew Bible, commonly called the Bible of the king of Spain, much wasted himself, and was accused in the court of Rome for his good deed, and being cited thither, Pro tantorum laborum praemio vix veniam impetravit.1 Likewise Christopher Plantin, by printing of his curious interlineary Bible, in Antwerp, through the unseasonable exactions of the king's officers, sunk and almost ruined his estate. And our worthy English knight, who set forth the golden-mouthed father in a silver print, was a loser by it.3

7. Whereas foolish pamphlets prove most beneficial to the printers. When a French printer complained that he was utterly undone by printing a solid serious book of Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him recompense, made that his jesting scurrilous work, which repaired the printer's loss with advantage. Such books the world swarms too much with. When one

With difficulty obtained pardon as a reward of his great labor.THUANUS, Obitus Virorum doctorum, anno 1598 (Fuller's reference). Idem, in Eodem oper, 1589 (Fuller).)

Sir Henry Savile's edition of Chrysostom in 8 volumes, 16101613.-See Hallam's Literature of Europe, Part III, ch. 1.