f others, and mark their
errant motions to his own use. The best optics are, to reflect the beams of
some great man's favour and grace to shine upon him. He is a good engineer
that alone can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common
tenet and practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed not long since, in the
first book of his history; their universities were generally base, not a
philosopher, a mathematician, an antiquary, &c., to be found of any note
amongst them, because they had no set reward or stipend, but every man
betook himself to divinity, _hoc solum in votis habens, opimum
sacerdotium_, a good parsonage was their aim. This was the practice of some
of our near neighbours, as [2023]Lipsius inveighs, "they thrust their
children to the study of law and divinity, before they be informed aright,
or capable of such studies." _Scilicet omnibus artibus antistat spes lucri,
et formosior est cumulus auri, quam quicquid Graeci Latinique delirantes
scripserunt. Ex hoc numero deinde veniunt ad gubernacula reipub. intersunt
et praesunt consiliis regum, o pater, o patria_? so he complained, and so
may others. For even so we find, to serve a great man, to get an office in
some bishop's court (to practise in some good town) or compass a benefice,
is the mark we shoot at, as being so advantageous, the highway to
preferment.

Although many times, for aught I can see, these men fail as often as the
rest in their projects, and are as usually frustrate of their hopes. For
let him be a doctor of the law, an excellent civilian of good worth, where
shall he practise and expatiate? Their fields are so scant, the civil law
with us so contracted with prohibitions, so few causes, by reason of those
all-devouring municipal laws, _quibus nihil illiteratius_, saith [2024]
Erasmus, an illiterate and a barbarous study, (for though they be never so
well learned in it, I can hardly vouchsafe them the name of scholars,
except they be otherwise qualified) and so few courts are left to that
profession, such slender offices, and those commonly to be compassed at
such dear rates, that I know not how an ingenious man should thrive amongst
them. Now for physicians, there are in every village so many mountebanks,
empirics, quacksalvers, Paracelsians, as they call themselves, _Caucifici
et sanicidae_ so [2025]Clenard terms them, wizards, alchemists, poor
vicars, cast apothecaries, physicians' men, barbers, and good wives,
professing great skil