miscellaneous
work it is impossible to give examples, but one critical passage from
Daniel, and one descriptive from Hakluyt may serve:--

"Methinks we should not so soon yield up our consents captive to
the authority of antiquity, unless we saw more reason; all our
understandings are not to be built by the square of Greece and
Italy. We are the children of nature as well as they, we are not
so placed out of the way of judgment but that the same sun of
discretion shineth upon us; we have our portion of the same
virtues, as well as of the same vices, et Catilinam quocunque in
populo videas, quocunque sub axe. Time and the turn of things
bring about these faculties according to the present estimation;
and, res temporibus, non tempore rebus servire opportet. So that
we must never rebel against use; quem penes arbitrium est, et vis
et norma loquendi. It is not the observing of trochaics nor their
iambics, that will make our writings aught the wiser: all their
poesy and all their philosophy is nothing, unless we bring the
discerning light of conceit with us to apply it to use. It is not
books, but only that great book of the world, and the
all-overspreading grace of Heaven that makes men truly judicial.
Nor can it but touch of arrogant ignorance to hold this or that
nation barbarous, these or those times gross, considering how
this manifold creature man, wheresoever he stand in the world,
hath always some disposition of worth, entertains the order of
society, affects that which is most in use, and is eminent in
some one thing or other that fits his humour or the times. The
Grecians held all other nations barbarous but themselves; yet
Pyrrhus, when he saw the well ordered marching of the Romans,
which made them see their presumptuous error, could say it was no
barbarous manner of proceeding. The Goths, Vandals, and
Longobards, whose coming down like an inundation overwhelmed, as
they say, all the glory of learning in Europe, have yet left us
still their laws and customs, as the originals of most of the
provincial constitutions of Christendom; which, well considered
with their other courses of government, may serve to clear them
from this imputation of ignorance. And though the vanquished
never speak well of the conqueror, yet even through the unsound
co