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raising them if they be too soft and weak, or else it is to cover them; or if occasion be, to pretend and represent them of the former sort whereof the examples are plentiful in the schools of philosophers, and in all other institutions of moral virtue; and of the other sort the examples are more plentiful in the courts of princes, and in all politic traffic, where it is ordinary to find not only profound dissimulations and suffocating the affections that no note or mark appear of them outwardly, but also lively simulations and affectations, carrying the tokens of passions which are not, as risus jussus and lachrymæ coacta, and the like.

OF HELP OF THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

THE intellectual powers have fewer means to work upon them than the will or body of man; but the one that prevaileth, that is exercise, worketh more forcibly in them than in the rest.

The ancient habit of the philosophers; Si quis quœerat in utramque partem de omni scibili.

The exercise of scholars making verses ex tempore ; Stans pede in uno.

The exercise of lawyers in memory narrative.

The exercise of sophists, and Jo. ad oppositum, with manifest effect.

Artificial memory greatly holpen by exercise.

The exercise of buffons, to draw all things to conceits ridiculous.

The means that help the understanding and faculties thereof are:

Not example, as in the will, by conversation; and here the conceit of imitation, already disgested, with the confutation obiter, si videbitur, of Tully's opinion,

advising a man to take some one to imitate. Similitude of faces analysed.

Arts, Logic, Rhetoric. The Ancients, Aristotle, Plato, Theætetus, Gorgias, Litigiosus vel Sophista, qu. Protagoras, Aristotle, Schola sua. Topics, Elenchs, Rhetorics, Organon, Cicero, Hermogenes. The Neoterics, Ramus, Agricola, Nil sacri, Lullius Typocosmia; studying Cooper's Dictionary; Mattheus Collection of proper words for Metaphors; Agrippa de Vanitate, &c.

Qu. if not here of imitation.

Collections preparative. Aristotle's similitude of a shoemaker's shop, full of shoes of all sorts; Demosthenes Exordia Concionum. Tully's precept of Theses of all sorts preparative.

The relying upon exercise, with the difference of using and tempering the instrument; and the similitude of prescribing against the laws of nature and of

estate.

FIVE POINTS.

1. That exercises are to be framed to the life; that is to say, to work ability in that kind, whereof a man in the course of actions shall have most use.

2. The indirect and oblique exercises which do per partes and per consequentiam inable those faculties, which perhaps direct exercise at first would but distort. And those have chiefly place where the faculty is weak not per se but per accidens. As if want of memory grow through lightness of wit and want of stayed attention, then the mathematics or the law helpeth; because they are things wherein if the mind once roam it cannot recover.

1 A blank is left in the MS. for this word.

3. Of the advantages of exercise; as to dance with heavy shoes, to march with heavy armour and carriage; and the contrary advantage (in natures very dull and unapt) of working alacrity by framing an exercise with some delight and affection;

veluti pueris dant crustula blandi

Doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.

4. Of the cautions of exercise; as to beware lest by evil doing, as all beginners do weakly, a man grow and be inveterate in an ill habit; and so take not the advantage of custom in perfection, but in confirming ill. Slubbering on the lute.

5. The marshalling and sequel of sciences and practices Logic and Rhetoric should be used to be read after Poesy, History, and Philosophy. First exercise to do things well and clean; after, promptly and readily.

I.

The exercises in the universities and schools are of memory and invention; either to speak by heart that which is set down verbatim, or to speak ex tempore; whereas there is little use in action of either of both: but most things which we utter are neither verbally premeditate, nor merely extemporal. Therefore exercise would be framed to take a little breathing; and to consider of heads; and then to form and fit the

speech ex ners, both

This would be done in two manwriting and tables, and without: for it is permitted and passable to use eunto if a man be not accustomed, it

t.

304 TOUCHING HELPS FOR INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

There is no use of a Narrative Memory in acade mies, viz. with circumstances of times, persons, and places, and with names; and it is one art to discourse, and another to relate and describe; and herein use and action is most conversant.

Also to sum up and contract is a thing in action of very general use.

SHORT NOTES

FOR

CIVIL CONVERSATION.

VOL. XIII.

20

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