ias, in the writing
of which the great Aristotle is said to have dipped his pen in his
heart's blood. Passing through these faculties with baneful haste and
a harmful diploma, they lay violent hands upon Moses, and sprinkling
about their faces dark waters and thick clouds of the skies, they offer
their heads, unhonoured by the snows of age, for the mitre of the
pontificate. This pest is greatly encouraged, and they are helped to
attain this fantastic clericate with such nimble steps, by Papal
provisions obtained by insidious prayers, and also by the prayers,
which may not be rejected, of cardinals and great men, by the cupidity
of friends and relatives, who, building up Sion in blood, secure
ecclesiastical dignities for their nephews and pupils, before they are
seasoned by the course of nature or ripeness of learning.

Alas! by the same disease which we are deploring, we see that the
Palladium of Paris has been carried off in these sad times of ours,
wherein the zeal of that noble university, whose rays once shed light
into every corner of the world, has grown lukewarm, nay, is all but
frozen. There the pen of every scribe is now at rest, generations of
books no longer succeed each other, and there is none who begins to
take place as a new author. They wrap up their doctrines in unskilled
discourse, and are losing all propriety of logic, except that our
English subtleties, which they denounce in public, are the subject of
their furtive vigils.

Admirable Minerva seems to bend her course to all the nations of the
earth, and reacheth from end to end mightily, that she may reveal
herself to all mankind. We see that she has already visited the
Indians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians and Greeks, the Arabs and the
Romans. Now she has passed by Paris, and now has happily come to
Britain, the most noble of islands, nay, rather a microcosm in itself,
that she may show herself a debtor both to the Greeks and to the
Barbarians. At which wondrous sight it is conceived by most men, that
as philosophy is now lukewarm in France, so her soldiery are unmanned
and languishing.

CHAPTER X

OF THE GRADUAL PERFECTING OF BOOKS

While assiduously seeking out the wisdom of the men of old, according
to the counsel of the Wise Man (Eccles. xxxix.): The wise man, he
says, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, we have not thought
fit to be misled into the opinion that the first founders of the arts
have purged away all cr