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.