m, when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs, and his
ass had but one foal." To say the best of this profession, I can give no
other testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; [1999]"He
is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so
sincere, none better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright,
innocent, plain-dealing men."

Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as
dotage, madness, simplicity, &c. Jo. Voschius would have good scholars to
be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary respect above other men,
"to have greater [2000]privileges than the rest, that adventure themselves
and abbreviate their lives for the public good." But our patrons of
learning are so far nowadays from respecting the muses, and giving that
honour to scholars, or reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those
indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their pains
taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours,
laborious tasks, wearisome days, dangers, hazards, (barred interim from all
pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives) if
they chance to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected,
contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts,
exposed to want, poverty, and beggary. Their familiar attendants are,

[2001] "Pallentes morbi, luctus, curaeque laborque
Et metus, et malesuada fames, et turpis egestas,
Terribiles visu formae"------

"Grief, labour, care, pale sickness, miseries,
Fear, filthy poverty, hunger that cries,
Terrible monsters to be seen with eyes."

If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone were
enough to make them all melancholy. Most other trades and professions,
after some seven years' apprenticeship, are enabled by their craft to live
of themselves. A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his
hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes a saving
voyage. An husbandman's gains are almost certain; _quibus ipse Jupiter
nocere non potest_ (whom Jove himself can't harm) ('tis [2002]Cato's
hyperbole, a great husband himself); only scholars methinks are most
uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards. For first,
not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all are not capable and docile,
[2003]_ex omniligno non fit Mercurius_: