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The Pleasant Madness of the Learned Profession
But let me be most foolish myself, and one whom Democritus may
not only laugh at but flout, if I go one foot further in the discovery
of the follies and madnesses of the common people. I'll betake me to
them that carry the reputation of wise men and hunt after that
golden bough, as says the proverb. Among whom the grammarians hold the
first place, a generation of men than whom nothing would be more
miserable, nothing more perplexed, nothing more hated of the gods, did
not I allay the troubles of that pitiful profession with a certain
kind of pleasant madness. For they are not only subject to those
five curses with which Homer begins his Iliads, as says the Greek
epigram, but six hundred; as being ever hunger-starved and slovens
in their schools- schools, did I say? Nay, rather cloisters,
bridewells, or slaughterhouses- grown old among a company of boys,
deaf with their noise, and pined away with stench and nastiness. And
yet by my courtesy it is that they think themselves the most excellent
of all men, so greatly do they please themselves in frighting a
company of fearful boys with a thundering voice and big looks,
tormenting them with ferules, rods, and whips; and, laying about
them without fear or wit, imitate the ass in the lion's skin. In the
meantime all that nastiness seems absolute spruceness, that stench a
perfume, and that miserable slavery a kingdom, and such too as they
would not change their tyranny for Phalaris' or Dionysius' empire.
Nor are they less happy in that new opinion they have taken up of
being learned; for whereas most of them beat into boys' heads
nothing but foolish toys, yet, you good gods! what Palemon, what
Donatus, do they not scorn in comparison of themselves? And so, I know
not by what tricks, they bring it about that to their boys' foolish
mothers and dolt-headed fathers they pass for such as they fancy
themselves. Add to this that other pleasure of theirs, that if any
of them happen to find out who was Anchises' mother, or pick out of
some wormeaten manuscript a word not commonly known- as suppose it
bubsequa for a cowherd, bovinator for a wrangler, manticulator for a
cutpurse- or dig up the ruins of some ancient monument with the
letters half eaten out; O Jupiter! what towerings! what triumphs! what
commendations! as if they had conquered Africa or taken in Babylon.
But what of this when they give up and down their foolish insipid
verses, and there wants not others that admire them as much? They
believe presently that Virgil's soul is transmigrated into them! But
nothing like this, when with mutual compliments they praise, admire,
and claw one another. Whereas if another do but slip a word and one
more quick-sighted than the rest discover it by accident, O
Hercules! what uproars, what bickerings, what taunts, what invectives!
If I lie, let me have the ill will of all the grammarians. I knew in
my time one of many arts, a Grecian, a Latinist, a mathematician, a
philosopher, a physician, a man master of them all, and sixty years of
age, who, laying by all the rest, perplexed and tormented himself
for above twenty years in the study of grammar, fully reckoning
himself a prince if he might but live so long till he could
certainly determine how the eight parts of speech were to be
distinguished, which none of the Greeks or Latins had yet fully
cleared: as if it were a matter to be decided by the sword if a man
made an adverb of a conjunction.
And for this cause is it that we have as many grammars as
grammarians; nay more, forasmuch as my friend Aldus has given us above
five, not passing by any kind of grammar, how barbarously or tediously
soever compiled, which he has not turned over and examined; envying
every man's attempts in this kind, how foolish so ever, and
desperately concerned for fear another should forestal him of his
glory, and the labors of so many years perish. And now, whether had
you rather call this Madness or Folly? It is no great matter to me
whether, so long as ye confess it is by my means that a creature,
otherwise the most miserable of all others, is raised to that height
of felicity that he has no desire to change his condition with the
King of Persia.
The Poets, I must confess, are not altogether so much beholding
to me, though 'tis agreed of all hands they are of my party too;
because they are a free kind of people, not restrained or limited to
any thing, and all their studies aim at nothing more than to tickle
the ears of fools with mere trifles and ridiculous fables. And yet
they are so bold upon it, that you'll scarce believe how they not only
assure themselves of immortality and a life like the Gods, but promise
it to others too. And to this order, before all others, Self-love
and Flattery are more peculiarly appendant; nor am I worshipt by any
sort of men with more plainness or greater constancy.
And then, for the rhetoricians, though they now and then shuffle
and cut with the philosopher, yet that these two are of my faction
also, though many other arguments might be produced, this clearly
evinces it; that besides their other trifles, they have written so
much and so exquisitely of fooling. And so, who ever he were that writ
of the Art of Rhetorick to Herennius, he reckons Folly as a species of
wit. And Quintilian, the sovereign of this order, has a chapter
touching laughter more prolix than an Iliad. In fine, they attribute
so much to Folly, that what many times cannot be cleared with the best
arguments, is yet now and then put off with a jest: unless, perhaps
you'll say, 'tis no part of Folly to provoke laughter, and that
artificially.
Of the same batch also are they that hunt after immortality of fame
by setting out books. Of whom, though all of 'em are indebted to me,
yet in the first place are they that nothing but daub paper with their
empty toys. For they that write learnedly to the understanding of a
few scholars, and refuse not to stand the test of a Persius or
Laelius, seem to me rather to be pitied than happy, as persons that
are ever tormenting themselves; adding, changing, putting in, blotting
out, revising, reprinting, showing it to friends, and nine years in
correcting, yet never fully satisfied; at so great a rate do they
purchase this vain reward, to wit, praise, and that too of a very few,
with so many watchings, so much sweat, so much vexation and loss of
sleep, the most precious of all things. Add to this the waste of
health, spoil of complexion, weakness of eyes or rather blindness,
poverty, envy, abstinence from pleasure, over-hasty old age,
untimely death, and the like; so highly does this wise man value the
approbation of one or two blear-eyed fellows.
But how much happier is this my writer's dotage who never studies
for anything but puts in writing whatever he pleases or what comes
first in his head, though it be but his dreams; and all this with
small waste of paper, as well knowing that the vainer those trifles
are, the higher esteem they will have with the greater number, that is
to say all the fools and unlearned. And what matter is it to slight
those few learned if yet they ever read them? Or of what authority
will the censure of so few wise men be against so great a cloud of
gainsayers?
But they are the wiser that put out other men's works for their
own, and transfer that glory which others with great pains have
obtained to themselves; relying on this, that they conceive, though it
should so happen that their theft be never so plainly detected, that
yet they should enjoy the pleasure of it for the present. And 'tis
worth one's while to consider how they please themselves when they are
applauded by the common people, pointed at in a crowd, "This is that
excellent person"; lie on booksellers' stalls; and in the top of every
page have three hard words read, but chiefly exotic and next degree to
conjuring; which, by the immortal gods! what are they but mere words?
And again, if you consider the world, by how few understood, and
praised by fewer! for even among the unlearned there are different
palates. Or what is it that their own very names are often counterfeit
or borrowed from some books of the ancients? When one styles himself
Telemachus, another Sthenelus, a third Laertes, a fourth Polycrates, a
fifth Thrasymachus. So that there is no difference whether they
title their books with the "Tale of a Tub," or, according to the
philosophers, by alpha beta.
But the most pleasant of all is to see them praise one another with
reciprocal epistles, verses, and encomiums; fools their fellow
fools, and dunces their brother dunces. This, in the other's
opinion, is an absolute Alcaeus; and the other, in his, a very
Callimachus. He looks upon Tully as nothing to the other, and the
other again pronounces him more learned than Plato. And sometimes
too they pick out their antagonist and think to raise themselves a
fame by writing one against the other; while the giddy multitude are
so long divided to whether of the two they shall determine the
victory, till each goes off conqueror, and, as if he had done some
great action, fancies himself a triumph.
And now wise men laugh at these things as foolish, as indeed they
are. Who denies it? Yet in the meantime, such is my kindness to
them, they live a merry life and would not change their imaginary
triumphs, no, not with the Scipioes. While yet those learned men,
though they laugh their fill and reap the benefit of the other's
folly, cannot without ingratitude deny but that even they too are
not a little beholding to me themselves.
And among them our advocates challenge the first place, nor is
there any sort of people that please themselves like them: for while
they daily roll Sisyphus his stone, and quote you a thousand cases, as
it were, in a breath no matter how little to the purpose, and heap
glosses upon glosses, and opinions on the neck of opinions, they bring
it at last to this pass, that that study of all other seems the most
difficult. Add to these our logicians and sophists, a generation of
men more prattling than an echo and the worst of them able to
outchat a hundred of the best picked gossips. And yet their
condition would be much better were they only full of words and not so
given to scolding that they most obstinately hack and hew one
another about a matter of nothing and make such a sputter about
terms and words till they have quite lost the sense. And yet they
are so happy in the good opinion of themselves that as soon as they
are furnished with two or three syllogisms, they dare boldly enter the
lists against any man upon any point, as not doubting but to run him
down with noise, though the opponent were another Stentor.
And next these come our philosophers, so much reverenced for
their furred gowns and starched beards that they look upon
themselves as the only wise men and all others as shadows. And yet how
pleasantly do they dote while they frame in their heads innumerable
worlds; measure out the sun, the moon, the stars, nay and heaven
itself, as it were, with a pair of compasses; lay down the causes of
lightning, winds, eclipses, and other the like inexplicable matters;
and all this too without the least doubting, as if they were
Nature's secretaries, or dropped down among us from the council of the
gods; while in the meantime Nature laughs at them and all their
blind conjectures. For that they know nothing, even this is a
sufficient argument, that they don't agree among themselves and so are
incomprehensible touching every particular.
These, though they have not the least degree of knowledge,
profess yet that they have mastered all; nay, though they neither know
themselves, nor perceive a ditch or block that lies in their way,
for that perhaps most of them are half blind, or their wits a
wool-gathering, yet give out that they have discovered ideas,
universalities, separated forms, first matters, quiddities,
haecceities, formalities, and the like stuff, things so thin and
bodiless that I believe even Lynceus himself was not able to
perceive them. But then chiefly do they disdain the unhallowed crowd
as often as with their triangles, quadrangles, circles, and the like
mathematical devices, more confounded than a labyrinth, and letters
disposed one against the other, as it were in battle array, they
cast a mist before the eyes of the ignorant. Nor is there wanting of
this kind some that pretend to foretell things by the stars and make
promises of miracles beyond all things of soothsaying, and are so
fortunate as to meet with people that believe them.
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