And further, the untimely learning of them
hath drawn on by consequence the superficial and unprofitable
teaching and writing of them, as fitteth indeed to the capacity of
children. Another is a lack I find in the exercises used in the
universities, which do snake too great a divorce between invention
and memory. For their speeches are either premeditate, in verbis
conceptis, where nothing is left to invention, or merely extemporal,
where little is left to memory. Whereas in life and action there is
least use of either of these, but rather of intermixtures of
premeditation and invention, notes and memory. So as the exercise
fitteth not the practice, nor the image the life; and it is ever a
true rule in exercises, that they be framed as near as may be to the
life of practice; for otherwise they do pervert the motions and
faculties of the mind, and not prepare them. The truth whereof is
not obscure, when scholars come to the practices of professions, or
other actions of civil life; which when they set into, this want is
soon found by themselves, and sooner by others.
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