'tis all mine, and none mine. As a good housewife out of divers
fleeces weaves one piece of cloth, a bee gathers wax and honey out of many
flowers, and makes a new bundle of all, _Floriferis ut apes in saltibus
omnia libant_, I have laboriously [99]collected this cento out of divers
writers, and that _sine injuria_, I have wronged no authors, but given
every man his own; which [100]Hierom so much commends in Nepotian; he stole
not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their
authors' names, but still said this was Cyprian's, that Lactantius, that
Hilarius, so said Minutius Felix, so Victorinus, thus far Arnobius: I cite
and quote mine authors (which, howsoever some illiterate scribblers account
pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine
style, I must and will use) _sumpsi, non suripui_; and what Varro, _lib. 6.
de re rust._ speaks of bees, _minime maleficae nullius opus vellicantes
faciunt delerius_, I can say of myself, Whom have I injured? The matter is
theirs most part, and yet mine, _apparet unde sumptum sit_ (which Seneca
approves), _aliud tamen quam unde sumptum sit apparet_, which nature doth
with the aliment of our bodies incorporate, digest, assimilate, I do
_concoquere quod hausi_, dispose of what I take. I make them pay tribute,
to set out this my Maceronicon, the method only is mine own, I must usurp
that of [101]Wecker _e Ter. nihil dictum quod non dictum prius, methodus
sola artificem ostendit_, we can say nothing but what hath been said, the
composition and method is ours only, and shows a scholar. Oribasius,
Aesius, Avicenna, have all out of Galen, but to their own method, _diverso
stilo, non diversa fide_. Our poets steal from Homer; he spews, saith
Aelian, they lick it up. Divines use Austin's words verbatim still, and our
story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best,

------"donec quid grandius aetas
Postera sorsque ferat melior."------[102]

Though there were many giants of old in physic and philosophy, yet I say
with [103]Didacus Stella, "A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may
see farther than a giant himself;" I may likely add, alter, and see farther
than my predecessors; and it is no greater prejudice for me to indite after
others, than for Aelianus Montaltus, that famous physician, to write _de
morbis capitis_ after Jason Pratensis, Heurnius, Hildesheim, &c., many
horses to run in a race, one logician,