or simples
of all sorts, and do likewise command the use of dead bodies for
anatomies. But these do respect but a few things. In general, there
will hardly be any main proficience in the disclosing of nature, except
there be some allowance for expenses about experiments; whether they be
experiments appertaining to Vulcanus or Daedalus, furnace or engine, or
any other kind. And therefore, as secretaries and spials of princes and
states bring in bills for intelligence, so you must allow the spials and
intelligencers of nature to bring in their bills; or else you shall be
ill advertised.

And if Alexander made such a liberal assignation to Aristotle of
treasure for the allowance of hunters, fowlers, fishers, and the like,
that he mought compile an history of nature, much better do they deserve
it that travail in arts of nature.

Another defect which I note, is an intermission or neglect in those
which are governors in universities of consultation, and in princes or
superior persons of visitation; to enter into account and consideration,
whether the readings, exercises, and other customs appertaining unto
learning, anciently begun and since continued, be well instituted or no;
and thereupon to ground an amendment or reformation in that which shall
be found inconvenient. For it is one of your Majesty's own most wise and
princely maxims, "that in all usages and precedents, the times be
considered wherein they first began; which if they were weak or
ignorant, it derogateth from the authority of the usage, and leaveth it
for suspect." And therefore inasmuch as most of the usages and orders of
the universities were derived from more obscure times, it is the more
requisite they be re-examined. In this kind I will give an instance or
two, for example's sake, of things that are the most obvious and
familiar. The one is a matter, which, though it be ancient and general,
yet I hold to be an error; which is, that scholars in universities come
too soon and too unripe to logic and rhetoric, arts fitter for graduates
than children and novices. For these two, rightly taken, are the gravest
of sciences, being the arts of arts; the one for judgment, the other for
ornament. And they be the rules and directions how to set forth and
dispose matter: and therefore for minds empty and unfraught with matter,
and which have not gathered that which Cicero calleth _sylva_ and
_supellex_, stuff and variety, to begin with those arts (as if one
should