To Salamanca yf thow send an Asse,
to Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, or dowaye, [Douai]
or that by travell to farthest lands hee passe,
or in the princes Court longe tyme doe staye:
yf, when he went, he were an Asse, noe art
will make him horse, for felde, for waie, for cart.
Then spare your cost, yf nature give not witt,
to send yowr sonns vnto the learned scooles,
for to the same, yf nature make not fitt,
doe what you cann, they still shall prove but fooles;
then tourne ech witt to that which nature will,
els fondlie thow thy sonne and cost dost spill.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Not College Material
Francis Thynne (1544-1608), "The vnapt not to be forced to learninge," Emblemes and Epigrames, ed. F.J. Furnivall (London: Early English Text Society, 1876), p. 57: