when they are
running in full speed, but bring them bridled beforehand to the race; so
do they use to preoccupy and predispose the minds of those persons with
rational considerations to enable them to encounter passion, whom
they perceive to be too mettlesome and unmanageable upon the sight of
provoking objects.

Furthermore, the young man is not altogether to neglect names themselves
when he meets with them; though he is not obliged to give much heed
to such idle descants as those of Cleanthes, who, while he professeth
himself an interpreter, plays the trifler, as in these passages of
Homer: [Greek omitted], ("Iliad," iii. 320; xvi. 233.) For he will
needs read the two of these words joined into one, and make them [Greek
omitted] for that the air evaporated from the earth by exhalation [Greek
omitted] is so called. Yea, and Chrysippus too, though he does not so
trifle, yet is very jejune, while he hunts after improbable etymologies.
As when he will need force the words [Greek omitted] to import Jupiter's
excellent faculty in speaking and powerfulness to persuade thereby.

But such things as these are fitter to be left to the examination of
grammarians and we are rather to insist upon such passages as are both
profitable and persuasive. Such, for instance, as these;--

My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains!

How skill'd he was in each obliging art;
The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart.
(Ibid. vi. 444; xvii. 671.)

For while the author tells us that fortitude may be taught, and that an
obliging and graceful way of conversing with others is to be gotten by
art and the use of reason, he exhorts us not to neglect the improvement
of ourselves, but by observing our teachers' instructions to learn a
becoming carriage, as knowing that clownishness and cowardice argue
ill-breeding and ignorance. And very suitable to what hath been said is
that which is said of Jupiter and Neptune:--

Gods of one source, of one ethereal race,
Alike divine, and heaven their native place;

But Jove the greater; first born of the skies,
And more than men or Gods supremely wise.
("Iliad," xiii. 354.)

For the poet therein pronounceth wisdom to be the most divine and royal
quality of all; as placing therein the greatest excellency of Jupiter
himself, and judging all virtues else to be necessarily consequent
thereunto. We are also to accust