7b} See _Calendar of State Papers_, Domestic, 1595-7, p. 310.

{368a} See Warners _Catalogue of Dulwich MSS._ pp. 24-6.

{368b} Cf. _ibid._ pp. 26-7.

{369a} See p. 235, note I.

{369b} Cf. Warner's _Dulwich MSS._ pp.30-31.

{369c} See p. 254, note I.

{370} Most of those that are commonly quoted are phrases in ordinary use
by all writers of the day. The only point of any interest raised in the
argument from parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation from
Aristotle which Bacon and Shakespeare not merely both make, but make in
what looks at a first glance to be the same erroneous form. Aristotle
wrote in his _Nicomachean Ethics_, i. 8, that young men were unfitted for
the study of _political_ philosophy. Bacon, in the _Advancement of
Learning_ (1605), wrote: 'Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be
regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of _moral_
philosophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about 1603, in
_Troilus and Cressida_, II. ii. 166, wrote of 'young men whom Aristotle
thought unfit to hear _moral_ philosophy.' But the alleged error of
substituting _moral_ for _political_ philosophy in Aristotle's text is
more apparent than real. By 'political' philosophy Aristotle, as his
context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society, which are hardly
distinguishable from what is commonly called 'morals.' In the summary
paraphrase of Aristotle's _Ethics_ which was translated into English from
the Italian, and published in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare
and Bacon refer is not rendered literally, but its general drift is given
as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit subject for study by
youths who are naturally passionate and headstrong. Such an
interpretation of Aristotle's language is common among sixteenth and
seventeenth century writers. Erasmus, in the epistle at the close of his
popular _Colloquia_ (Florence, 1530, sig. Q Q), wrote of his endeavour to
insinuate serious precepts 'into the minds of young men whom Aristotle
rightly described as unfit auditors of moral philosophy' ('in animos
adolescentium, quos recte scripsit Aristoteles inidoneos auditores
ethicae philosophiae'). In a French translation of the _Ethics_ by the
Comte de Plessis, published at Paris in 1553, the passage is rendered
'parquoy le ieune enfant n'est suffisant auditeur de la science civile;'
and an English commentator (in a manuscript note written abou