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8 Erasmus ye sat as lumpish and pensive as if ye had come 1from consulting an Oracle. And as it usually happens when the Sun begins to shew his Beams, or when after a sharp Winter the Spring breathes afresh on the Earth, all things immediately get a new face, new colour, and recover as it were a certain kind of youth again: in like manner, by but beholding me, ye have in an instant gotten another kind of Countenance ; and so what the otherwise great Rhetoricians with their tedious and long-studied Orations can hardly effect, to wit, to remove the trouble of the Mind, I have done it at once, with my single look. But if ye ask me why I appear before you in this strange dress, be pleas’d to lend me your ears, and I’le tell you; not those ears, I mean, ye carry to Church, but abroad with ye, such as ye are wont to prick up to Jugglers, Fools and Buffons, and such as our Friend Midas once gave to Pan. For I am dispos’d awhile to play the Sophister with ye; not of their sort who nowadays buzle Young-men’s heads with certain empty notions and curious trifles, yet teach them 1 e Trophonii specu.
