was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado
to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the
infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and
drag our choicest and hopefulest wits to that asinine feast of sow
thistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the
food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age.

I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits
a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the
offices, both private and public, of peace and war.

III

ON READING IN HIS YOUTH[80]

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in
laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless
he have in himself the experience and the practise of all that which
is praiseworthy. These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of
nature, an honest haughtiness, and self-esteem either of what I was,
or what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that
modesty, whereof, tho not in the title-page, yet here I may be excused
to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of
their natural aid together kept me still above those low descents of
mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree
to salable and unlawful prostitutions.

Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither my
younger feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and
romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood
founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all
Christendom. There I read it in the oath of every knight, that he
should defend to the expense of his best blood, or of his life, if it
so befell him, the honor and chastity of virgin or matron; from whence
even then I learned what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the
defense of which so many worthies, by such a dear adventure of
themselves, had sworn. And if I found in the story afterward, any of
them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it the same fault
of the poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written
indecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every
free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight,
nor needed to expect t