wrong, or for children and the common people, unto whom a man must tell all, and see what the event would be.  I would not have a man go about and labour by circumlocutions to induce and winne me to attention, and that (as our Heralds or Criers do) they shall ring out their words:  Now heare me, now listen, or ho-yes. [Footnote:  Oyez, hear.] The Romanes in their religion were wont to say, “Hoc age; [Footnote:  Do this.] “which in ours we say, “Sursum corda. [Footnote:  Lift up your hearts.] There are so many lost words for me.  I come readie prepared from my house.  I neede no allurement nor sawce, my stomacke is good enough to digest raw meat:  And whereas with these preparatives and flourishes, or preambles, they thinke to sharpen my taste or stir my stomacke, they cloy and make it wallowish. [Footnote:  Mawkish.] Shall the privilege of times excuse me from this sacrilegious boldnesse, to deem Platoes Dialogismes to be as languishing, by over-filling and stuffing his matter?  And to bewaile the time that a man who had so many thousands of things to utter, spends about so many, so long, so vaine, and idle interloqutions, and preparatives?  My ignorance shall better excuse me, in that I see nothing in the beautie of his language.  I generally enquire after bookes that use sciences, and not after such as institute them.  The two first, and Plinie, with others of their ranke, have no Hoc age in them, they will have to doe with men that have forewarned themselves; or if they have, it is a materiall and substantial!  Hoc age, and that hath his bodie apart I likewise love to read the Epistles and ad Atticum, not onely because they containe a most ample instruction of the historic and affaires of his times, but much more because in them I descrie his private humours.  For (as I have said elsewhere) I am wonderfull curious to discover and know the minde, the soul, the genuine disposition and naturall judgement of my authors.  A man ought to judge their sufficiencie and not their customes, nor them by the shew of their writings, which they set forth on this world’s theatre.  I have sorrowed a thousand times that ever we lost the booke that Brutus writ of Vertue.  Oh it is a goodly thing to learne the Theorike of such as understand the practice well.  But forsomuch as the Sermon is one thing and the Preacher an other, I love as much to see Brutus in Plutarke as in himself:  I would rather make choice to know certainly what talk he had in his tent with some of his familiar friends, the night fore-going the battell, than the speech he made the morrow after to his Armie; and what he did in his chamber or closet, than what in the senate or market place.  As for Cicero, I am of the common judgement, that besides learning there was no exquisite [Footnote:  Overelaborate.] eloquence in him:  He was a good citizen, of an honest, gentle nature, as are commonly fat and burly men:  for so was he:  But to speake truly of thim? full of ambitious vanity and remisse niceness.