For it is one of your Majesty's own most wise and princely maxims,
"That in all usages and precedents, the times be considered wherein
they first began; which if they were weak or ignorant, it derogateth
from the authority of the usage, and leaveth it for suspect." And
therefore inasmuch as most of the usages and orders of the
universities were derived from more obscure times, it is the more
requisite they be re-examined. In this kind I will give an instance
or two, for example sake, of things that are the most obvious and
familiar. The one is a matter, which though it be ancient and
general, yet I hold to be an error; which is, that scholars in
universities come too soon and too unripe to logic and rhetoric,
arts fitter for graduates than children and novices. For these two,
rightly taken, are the gravest of sciences, being the arts of arts;
the one for judgment, the other for ornament. And they be the rules
and directions how to set forth and dispose matter: and therefore
for minds empty and unfraught with matter, and which have not
gathered that which Cicero calleth sylva and supellex, stuff and
variety, to begin with those arts (as if one should learn to weigh,
or to measure, or to paint the wind) doth work but this effect, that
the wisdom of those arts, which is great and universal, is almost
made contemptible, and is degenerate into childish sophistry and
ridiculous affectation.
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