d need have a great memory; if he confer little,
he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have
much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise;
poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral,
grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: _Abeunt studia in
mores_;[110] nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be
wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have
appropriate exercises--bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting
for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the
head and the like; so, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the
mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so
little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or
find differences, let him study the school-men, for they are _Cymini
sectores_;[111] if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up
one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers'
cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

[Footnote 108: Attentively.]
[Footnote 109: Subjects.]
[Footnote 110: Studies pass into the character.]
[Footnote 111: Hair-splitters.]

OF ADVERSITY.

It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that
"the good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the
good things that belong to adversity are to be admired"--_Bona rerum
secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia_. Certainly, if miracles be
the command over Nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a
higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), "It
is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security
of a god "--_Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem dei_.
This would have done better in poesy, where transcendencies are more
allowed; and the poets indeed have been busy with it; for it is in
effect the thing which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient
poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery;[112] nay, and to have
some approach to the state of a Christian; "that Hercules, when he went
to unbind _Prometheus_ (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the
length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher," lively
describing Christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the
flesh through the waves of the world. But, to speak in a _mean_[113] the
virtue of pros