13. Yisiphi isifundo esingasifunda kuRuthe ngokwamukela iseluleko sabantu abadala? (Bheka noJobe 12:12.) To leaue these to the mercie of their mother tongue, that feed on nought but the crummes that fal from the translators trencher, I come (sweet friend) to thy Arcadian Menaphon, whose attire, though not so statelie, yet comelie, dooth entitle thee aboue all other to that temperatum dicendi genus which Tullie in his Orator tearmeth true eloquence. Let other men (as they please) praise the mountaine that in seauen yeares brings foorth a mouse, or the Italianate pen that of a packet of pilfries affoordeth the presse a pamphlet or two in an age, and then in disguised arraie vaunts Ouids and Plutarchs plumes as their owne; but giue me the man whose extemporall vaine in anie humor will excell our greatest Art-masters deliberate thoughts, whose inuention, quicker than his eye, will challenge the proudest Rethoritian to the contention of like perfection with like expedition. What is he amongst Students so simple that cannot bring forth (tandem aliquando) some or other thing singular, sleeping betwixt euerie sentence? Was it not Maros xij. years toyle that so famed his xij. Æneidos? Or Peter Ramus xvj. yeares paines that so praised his pettie Logique? Howe is it, then, our drowping wits should so wonder at an exquisite line that was his masters day labour? Indeede, I must needes say the descending yeares from the Philosophers Athens haue not been supplied with such present Orators as were able in anie English vaine to be eloquent of their owne, but either they must borrow inuention of Ariosto and his Countreymen, take vp choyce of words by exchange in Tullies Tusculane and the Latine Historiographers store-houses, similitudes, nay whole sheetes and tractacts verbatim, from the plentie of Plutarch and Plinie, and, to conclude, their whole methode of writing from the libertie of Comical fictions that haue succeeded to our Rethoritians by a second imitation: so that well may the Adage, Nil dictum quod non dictum prius, bee the most iudiciall estimate of our latter Writers. 2