So that the ending end of all earthly learning being virtuous
action, those skills that most serve to bring forth that have a most
just title to be princes over all the rest; wherein, if we can show
it rightly, the poet is worthy to have it before any other
competitors. {26}
Among {27} whom principally to challenge it, step forth the moral
philosophers; whom, methinks, I see coming toward me with a sullen
gravity (as though they could not abide vice by daylight), rudely
clothed, for to witness outwardly their contempt of outward things,
with books in their hands against glory, whereto they set their
names; sophistically speaking against subtlety, and angry with any
man in whom they see the foul fault of anger. These men, casting
largesses as they go, of definitions, divisions, and distinctions,
with a scornful interrogative do soberly ask: Whether it be
possible to find any path so ready to lead a man to virtue, as that
which teacheth what virtue is; and teacheth it not only by
delivering forth his very being, his causes and effects; but also by
making known his enemy, vice, which must be destroyed; and his
cumbersome servant, passion, which must be mastered, by showing the
generalities that contain it, and the specialities that are derived
from it; lastly, by plain setting down how it extends itself out of
the limits of a man's own little world, to the government of
families, and maintaining of public societies?
The historian {28} scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to say so
much, but that he (laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing
{29} himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose
greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of
hearsay, having much ado to accord differing writers, and to pick
truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago
than with the present age, and yet better knowing how this world
goes than how his own wit runs; curious for antiquities, and
inquisitive of novelties, a wonder to young folks, and a tyrant in
table-talk) denieth, in a great chafe, that any man for teaching of
virtue and virtuous actions, is comparable to him.
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