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44 Erasmus who stepping up to speak somewhat, I know not what, in publique, was forc’d to come down again well laught at for his pains. Though yet in this he was not altogether a fool, that he refus’d the appellation of Wise, and returning it back to the Oracle, deliver’d his opinion That a wise man should abstain from medling with publique business; unless perhaps he should have rather admonisht us to beware of Wisdom if we intended to be reckon’d among the number of men, there being nothing but his Wisdom that first accus’d and afterwards sentenc’t him to the drinking of his poison’d Cup. For while, as ye find him in Aristophanes, Philosophying about Clouds and Ideas, measuring how far a Flea could leap, and admiring that so small a creature as a Flye should make so great a buzze, he medled not with any thing that concern’d common life. But his Master being in danger of his head, his Scholar Plato is at hand, to wit that famous Patron, that being disturb’d with the noise of the people, could not go through half his first Sentence. What should I speak of Theophrastus, who being about to make an Oration, became as dumb as if he had met a Wolfe in
