universal map is to direct the way between London and York.  The better sort of rules have been not unfitly compared to glasses of steel unpolished, where you may see the images of things, but first they must be filed:  so the rules will help if they be laboured and polished by practice.  But how crystalline they may be made at the first, and how far forth they may be polished aforehand, is the question, the inquiry whereof seemeth to me deficient.

(14) There hath been also laboured and put in practice a method, which is not a lawful method, but a method of imposture:  which is, to deliver knowledges in such manner as men may speedily come to make a show of learning, who have it not.  Such was the travail of Raymundus Lullius in making that art which bears his name; not unlike to some books of typocosmy, which have been made since; being nothing but a mass of words of all arts, to give men countenance, that those which use the terms might be thought to understand the art; which collections are much like a fripper’s or broker’s shop, that hath ends of everything, but nothing of worth.

XVIII. (1) Now we descend to that part which concerneth the illustration of tradition, comprehended in that science which we call rhetoric, or art of eloquence, a science excellent, and excellently well laboured.  For although in true value it is inferior to wisdom (as it is said by God to Moses, when he disabled himself for want of this faculty, “Aaron shall be thy speaker, and thou shalt be to him as God"), yet with people it is the more mighty; for so Solomon saith, Sapiens corde appellabitur prudens, sed dulcis eloquio majora reperiet, signifying that profoundness of wisdom will help a man to a name or admiration, but that it is eloquence that prevaileth in an active life.  And as to the labouring of it, the emulation of Aristotle with the rhetoricians of his time, and the experience of Cicero, hath made them in their works of rhetoric exceed themselves.  Again, the excellency of examples of eloquence in the orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, added to the perfection of the precepts of eloquence, hath doubled the progression in this art; and therefore the deficiences which I shall note will rather be in some collections, which may as handmaids attend the art, than in the rules or use of the art itself.

(2) Notwithstanding, to stir the earth a little about the roots of this science, as we have done of the rest, the duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will.  For we see reason is disturbed in the administration thereof by three means—­by illaqueation or sophism, which pertains to logic; by imagination or impression, which pertains to rhetoric; and by passion or affection, which pertains to morality.  And as in negotiation with others, men are wrought by cunning, by importunity, and by vehemency; so in this negotiation within ourselves, men are undermined by inconsequences, solicited and importuned by impressions