For who can take upon him to
write of the proper duty, virtue, challenge, and right of every
several vocation, profession, and place? For although sometimes a
looker on may see more than a gamester, and there be a proverb more
arrogant than sound, "That the vale best discovereth the hill;" yet
there is small doubt but that men can write best and most really and
materially in their own professions; and that the writing of
speculative men of active matter for the most part doth seem to men
of experience, as Phormio's argument of the wars seemed to Hannibal,
to be but dreams and dotage. Only there is one vice which
accompanieth them that write in their own professions, that they
magnify them in excess. But generally it were to be wished (as that
which would make learning indeed solid and fruitful) that active men
would or could become writers.
(8) In which kind I cannot but mention, honoris causa, your
Majesty's excellent book touching the duty of a king; a work richly
compounded of divinity, morality, and policy, with great aspersion
of all other arts; and being in some opinion one of the most sound
and healthful writings that I have read: not distempered in the
heat of invention, nor in the coldness of negligence; not sick of
dizziness, as those are who leese themselves in their order, nor of
convulsions, as those which cramp in matters impertinent; not
savouring of perfumes and paintings, as those do who seek to please
the reader more than nature beareth; and chiefly well disposed in
the spirits thereof, being agreeable to truth and apt for action;
and far removed from that natural infirmity, whereunto I noted those
that write in their own professions to be subject--which is, that
they exalt it above measure.
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