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The Praise of Folly 45 his way, which yet would have put courage in a Man of War? Or Isocrates, that was so cowhearted that he durst never attempt it? Or Tully, that great Founder of the Roman Eloquence, that could never begin to speak without an odd kind of trembling, like a Boy that had got the Hick-cop ; which Fabius interprets as an argument of a wise Oratour and one that was sensible of what he was doing; and while he sayes it, does he not plainly confess that Wisdom is a great obstacle to the true management of business? What would become of ’em, think ye, were they to fight it out at blows, that are so dead through fear, when the Contest is only with empty words? And next to these is cry’d up, forsooth, that goodly sentence of Plato’s: ‘Happy is that Commonwealth where a Philosopher is Prince, or whose Prince is addicted to Philosophy”. When yet if ye consult Historians, you’ll find no Princes more pestilent to the Commonwealth than where the Empire has fall’n to some smatterer in Philosophy or one given to Letters. To the truth of which I think the Catoes give sufficient credit; of whom the one was ever
