of framing the posts, beams, and other parts of building, is not the same with the manner of joining them and erecting the building; and in mechanicals, the direction how to frame an instrument or engine is not the same with the manner of setting it on work and employing it; and yet, nevertheless, in expressing of the one you incidently express the aptness towards the other; so the doctrine of conjugation of men in society differeth from that of their conformity thereunto.

(7) This part of duty is subdivided into two parts:  the common duty of every man, as a man or member of a state; the other, the respective or special duty of every man in his profession, vocation, and place.  The first of these is extant and well laboured, as hath been said.  The second likewise I may report rather dispersed than deficient; which manner of dispersed writing in this kind of argument I acknowledge to be best.  For who can take upon him to write of the proper duty, virtue, challenge, and right of every several vocation, profession, and place?  For although sometimes a looker on may see more than a gamester, and there be a proverb more arrogant than sound, “That the vale best discovereth the hill;” yet there is small doubt but that men can write best and most really and materially in their own professions; and that the writing of speculative men of active matter for the most part doth seem to men of experience, as Phormio’s argument of the wars seemed to Hannibal, to be but dreams and dotage.  Only there is one vice which accompanieth them that write in their own professions, that they magnify them in excess.  But generally it were to be wished (as that which would make learning indeed solid and fruitful) that active men would or could become writers.

(8) In which kind I cannot but mention, honoris causa, your Majesty’s excellent book touching the duty of a king; a work richly compounded of divinity, morality, and policy, with great aspersion of all other arts; and being in some opinion one of the most sound and healthful writings that I have read:  not distempered in the heat of invention, nor in the coldness of negligence; not sick of dizziness, as those are who leese themselves in their order, nor of convulsions, as those which cramp in matters impertinent; not savouring of perfumes and paintings, as those do who seek to please the reader more than nature beareth; and chiefly well disposed in the spirits thereof, being agreeable to truth and apt for action; and far removed from that natural infirmity, whereunto I noted those that write in their own professions to be subject—­which is, that they exalt it above measure.  For your Majesty hath truly described, not a king of Assyria or Persia in their extern glory, but a Moses or a David, pastors of their people.  Neither can I ever leese out of my remembrance what I heard your Majesty in the same sacred spirit of government deliver in a great cause of judicature, which was, “That kings