we can make majors and officers
every year, but not scholars: kings can invest knights and barons, as
Sigismund the emperor confessed; universities can give degrees; and _Tu
quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest_; but he nor they, nor all the
world, can give learning, make philosophers, artists, orators, poets; we
can soon say, as Seneca well notes, _O virum bonum, o divitem_, point at a
rich man, a good, a happy man, a prosperous man, _sumptuose vestitum,
Calamistratum, bene olentem, magno temporis impendio constat haec laudatio,
o virum literarum_, but 'tis not so easily performed to find out a learned
man. Learning is not so quickly got, though they may be willing to take
pains, to that end sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their
patrons and parents, yet few can compass it. Or if they be docile, yet all
men's wills are not answerable to their wits, they can apprehend, but will
not take pains; they are either seduced by bad companions, _vel in puellam
impingunt, vel in poculum_ (they fall in with women or wine) and so spend
their time to their friends' grief and their own undoings. Or put case they
be studious, industrious, of ripe wits, and perhaps good capacities, then
how many diseases of body and mind must they encounter? No labour in the
world like unto study. It may be, their temperature will not endure it, but
striving to be excellent to know all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life
and all. Let him yet happily escape all these hazards, _aereis intestinis_
with a body of brass, and is now consummate and ripe, he hath profited in
his studies, and proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is
fit for preferment, where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he
was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming to the
University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The
most parable and easy, and about which many are employed, is to teach a
school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's
wages, ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as
he can please his patron or the parish; if they approve him not (for
usually they do but a year or two) as inconstant, as [2004]they that cried
"Hosanna" one day, and "Crucify him" the other; serving-man-like, he must
go look a new master; if they do, what is his reward?

[2005] "Hoc quoque te manet ut pueros elementa docentem
Occupet extremis in vicis alba