and labor hard for it. So did Seneca, by his own confession, ep. 8. Not a day that I spend idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking, and now slumbring to their continual task. Hear Tully pro Archia Poeta: whilst others loytered, and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book, so they do that will be Scholars, and that to the hazard (I say) of their healths, fortunes, wits, and lives.

How much did Aristotle and Ptolomy spend? unius regni pretium they say, more then a Kings ransom; how many crowns per annum, to perfect arts, the one about his History of Creatures, the other on his Almagest? How much time did Thebet Benchorat employ, to finde out the motion of the eight sphear? forty years and more, some write:

how many poor Scholars have lost their wits, or become Dizards, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse and bene esse, to gain knowledg? for which, after all their pains in their worlds esteem they are accounted ridiculous and silly Fools, Idiots, Asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting, and mad. Look for examples in Hildisheim spicel. 2. de mania & delirio: read Trincavellius l. 3. consil. 36. & c. 17. Montanus consil. 233. Garceus de Iudic. genit. cap. 33. Mercurialis consil. 86. cap. 25. Prosper Calenius in his Book de atrâ bile: Go to Bedlam and ask.

Or if they keep their wits, yet they are esteemed scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage: after seven years study——statuâ taciturnius exit, Plerumque & risum populi quatit.——

Because they cannot ride an horse, which every Clown can do; salute and court a Gentlewoman, carve at Table, chringe, and make congies, which every common Swasher can do, hos populus ridet, &c. they are laughed to scorn, and accompted silly fools by our Gallants. Yea many times, such is their misery, they deserve it: a meer Scholar, a meer Ass.

Obstipo capite, & figentes lumine terram, Murmura cùm secum, & rabiosa silentia rodunt, Atque experrecto trutinantur verba labello, Ægroti veteris meditantes somnia, gigni De nihilo nihilum; in nihilum nil posse reverti.

——who do lean awry Their heads piercing the earth with a fixt eye: When by themselves they gnaw their murmuring, And furious silence, as ’twere balancing Each word upon their out-stretcht lip, and when They meditate the dreams of old sick men, As, Out of nothing, nothing can be brought, And that which is, can ne’re be turn’d to nought.

Thus they go commonly meditating unto themselves, thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Fulgosius l. 8. c. 7. makes mention how Th. Aquinas supping with King Lewis of France, upon a sudden knocked his fist upon the table, & cryed, conclusum est contra Manichæos, his wits were a woolgathering, as they say, & his head busied about other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much abashed.

Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found out the means to know how much gold was mingled with the silver in King Hierons crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cryed εὕρηκα I have found: and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about him: when the City was taken, and the souldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it. S. Bernard rode all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was, Marullus lib. 2. cap. 4.

It was Democritus carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for Hippocrates to cure him: if he had been in any solemn company, he would upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran like a mad man, saying, he came from hell as a Spie, to tell the devils what mortal men did.

Your greatest Students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no whit experienced in worldly business; they can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base Tradesman. Are not these men fools? and how should they be otherwise, but as so many Sots in Schools, when (as he well observed) they neither hear nor see such things as are commonly practised abroad? how should they get experience, by what means?

I knew in my time many Scholars, saith Æneas Sylvius (in an Epistle of his to Gasper Scitick Chancellor to the Emperor) excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility, nor knew how to manage their domestick or publike affairs. Paglarensis was amazed, and said his Farmer had surely cosened him, when he heard him tell that his Sow had eleven Pigs, and his Ass had but one Foal.

To say the best of this Profession, I can give no other testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isæus; He is yet a Scholer, than which kinde of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain dealing men.