astronomy; merchants, factors study arithmetic; surveyors get them geometry; spectacle-makers optics; land-leapers geography; town-clerks rhetoric, what should he do with a spade, that hath no ground to dig; or they with learning, that have no use of it? thus they reason, and are not ashamed to let mariners, apprentices, and the basest servants, be better qualified than themselves.  In former times, kings, princes, and emperors, were the only scholars, excellent in all faculties.  Julius Caesar mended the year, and writ his own Commentaries,

[2057]  ------“media inter prealia semper,
Stellarum coelique plagis, superisque vacavit.”

[2058]Antonius, Adrian, Nero, Seve.  Jul. &c. [2059]Michael the emperor, and Isacius, were so much given to their studies, that no base fellow would take so much pains:  Orion, Perseus, Alphonsus, Ptolomeus, famous astronomers; Sabor, Mithridates, Lysimachus, admired physicians:  Plato’s kings all:  Evax, that Arabian prince, a most expert jeweller, and an exquisite philosopher; the kings of Egypt were priests of old, chosen and from thence,—­Idem rex hominum, Phoebique sacerdos:  but those heroical times are past; the Muses are now banished in this bastard age, ad sordida tuguriola, to meaner persons, and confined alone almost to universities.  In those days, scholars were highly beloved, [2060]honoured, esteemed; as old Ennius by Scipio Africanus, Virgil by Augustus; Horace by Meceanas:  princes’ companions; dear to them, as Anacreon to Polycrates; Philoxenus to Dionysius, and highly rewarded.  Alexander sent Xenocrates the philosopher fifty talents, because he was poor, visu rerum, aut eruditione praestantes viri, mensis olim regum adhibiti, as Philostratus relates of Adrian and Lampridius of Alexander Severus:  famous clerks came to these princes’ courts, velut in Lycaeum, as to a university, and were admitted to their tables, quasi divum epulis accumbentes; Archilaus, that Macedonian king, would not willingly sup without Euripides, (amongst the rest he drank to him at supper one night, and gave him a cup of gold for his pains) delectatus poetae suavi sermone; and it was fit it should be so; because as [2061]Plato in his Protagoras well saith, a good philosopher as much excels other men, as a great king doth the commons of his country; and again, [2062]_quoniam illis nihil deest, et minime egere solent, et disciplinas quas profitentur, soli a contemptu vindicare possunt_, they needed not to beg so basely, as they compel [2063]scholars in our times to complain of poverty, or crouch to a rich chuff for a meal’s meat, but could vindicate themselves, and those arts which they professed.  Now they would and cannot:  for it is held by some of them, as an axiom, that to keep them poor, will make them study; they must be dieted, as horses to a race, not pampered, [2064]_Alendos volunt, non saginandos, ne melioris mentis flammula extinguatur_; a fat bird will not sing, a fat dog cannot hunt, and