This Caprichio, _Sir Humourous_, hee cometh to me to be cured. I counsel marriage with his mistresse, according to Hippocrates his method, together with milk-diet, herbs, aloes, and wild parsley, good in such cases, though Avicenna preferreth some sorts of wild fowl, teals, widgeons, beccaficos, which men in Sussex eat. He flies out in a passion, ho! ho; and falls to calling me names, dizzard, ass, lunatic, moper, Bedlamite, Pseudo-Democritus. I smile in his face, bidding him be patient, tranquil, to no purpose, he still rages: I think this man must fetch his remedies from Utopia, Fairy Land, Islands in the Moone, &c.
* * * * * Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as _Bodinus de Periodis_ saith of such an one, _arrident amici ridet mundus_, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, meanwhile the world thinks him no better than a dizzard, a ninny, a sophist. *
* * * Philosophy running mad, madness philosophizing, much idle-learned inquiries, what truth is? and no issue, fruit, of all these noises, only huge books are written, and who is the wiser? * * * * * Men sitting in the Doctor's chair, we marvel how they got there being _homines intellectûs pulverulenti_ as _Trincauellius_ notes; they care not so they may raise a dust to smother the eyes of their oppugners; _homines parvulissimi_, as _Lemnius_, whom _Alcuin_ herein taxeth of a crude Latinism; dwarfs, minims, the least little men, these spend their time, and it is odds but they lose their time and wits too into the bargain, chasing of nimble and retiring Truth: Her they prosecute, her still they worship, _libant_, they make libations, spilling the wine as those old Romans in their sacrificials, _Cerealia, May games:_ Truth is the game all these hunt after, to the extreme perturbacyon and drying up of the moistures _humidum radicale exsiccant_, as _Galen_, in his counsel to one of these wear-wits, brain-moppers, spunges saith. * * * and for all this _nunquam metam attingunt_, and how should they? they bowle awry, shooting beside the marke; whereas it should appear, that _Truth absolute_ on this planet of ours is scarcely to be found, but in her stede _Queene Opinion_ predominates, governs, whose shifting and ever mutable _Lampas_, me seemeth, is man's destinie to follow, she præcurseth, she guideth him, before his uncapable eyes she frisketh her tender lights, which entertayne the child-man, untill what time his sight be strong to endure the vision of _Very Truth_, which is in the heavens, the vision beatifical, as _Anianus_ expounds in his argument against certain mad wits which helde God to be corporeous; these were dizzards, fools, _gothamites_. * * * * but and if _Very Truth_ be extant indeede on earth, as some hold she it is which actuates men's deeds, purposes, ye may in vaine look for her in the learned universities, halls, colleges. Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford, amongst great clerks, disputants, subtile Aristotles, men _nodosi ingenii, able to take Lully by the chin_, but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an _Idiota_ or common person, _no great things_, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with _Natura_ her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, _Belvideres_, on a sudden the goddesse herself _Truth_ has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her. * * *