We are cast by chance into an age in which nothing is worse than to
be openly ignorant, nothing more rare than to be fully learned. Just as
everyone knows something of letters, no one knows everything. The
middle, and therefore common, way to proceed in order to avoid both the
shame of ignorance and the bother of reading, is to use one art in all things
in order to seem to know all the rest. Thus, others delight in epitomes,
paradoxes, and the stings of extravagant wits, and hence place a high value
upon Ramon Lull, Gemma Frisius, Raimond Sebond, Sextus Empiricus,
the Abbot Trithemius, Henry Cornelius Aggrippa, Erasmus, Peter Ramus,
and the heretical writers. It is enough for lazy wits to have the appearance
of knowing, if they are able to plausibly show that others' knowledge is
flawed. But envy underlies this attitude, and produces as a result this
ungrounded, frivolous, and overblown knowledge. You must climb a
nobler, swifter, and clearer path, and one less open to those who keep an
eye on literature. And because the natural occupations of court, in which
you spend your time, do not allow you the leisure for literature, because,
after sleep, which by custom must not be shaken off until after ten in the
morning; after you have dressed in the clothes appropriate to the day, place,
and passions; after having composed your face in the mirror, and worked
out whom to receive with a jeer or with a frown; after banquets and
amusements–how much time is left over in your life for reading and the
improvement of your mind? Yet you do not disdain to appear learned, that
you sometimes might praise elegantly and suitably your companions, the
royal hounds, and although you are not able to know those things that
others know, at least you manage to know what they do not know; you will
advance yourself along this path, by means of my advice.
Having abandoned those authors that they call the Classics to academics and schoolmasters to wear out, instead strive–with the help of those
to whom you are safely able to admit ignorance–to seek out books
difficult for others to locate. Nor should you produce anything in conversations from generally known authorities. Instead cite from these other
authorities, such that your words either seem to be your own, if you leave
the names unmentioned, or, if what you say is not dignified and is in need
of authority, your audience–who before seemed to know everything–may, with reverence for you, hear about new authors. Therefore, I note
down this list for your use, that having prepared these books, you might
suddenly spring forth, on almost all topics, if not more learned than others,
at least as learned in a different way.
1. Nicolas Hill, On Distinguishing the Sex and Hermaphroditism of Atoms; The same,
On their Anatomy, and How to Aid in their Births when they are buried. To which is
added The Art of Making Fire-Pots, and all the equipment necessary for that purpose,
by his countryman and contemporary Master Plat.
2. The Imitator of Moses. The Art of Preserving Clothes beyond Forty years by the
English Author Topcliffe, with a commentary in English by Jacob Stonehouse, who has
put forth a treatise entitled To keep clothes near the fashion, in the same language.
3. The art of writing out, within the circumference of a penny, all true things in John Foxe
that were related to him, written by Peter Bales.
4. That the Chimera is a Sign of the Antichrist, by an anonymous member of the
Sorbonne.
5. Galatinus: That Jews are Ubiquitaries, because they belong nowhere.
6. That the book of Tobit is canonical. In which, drawing upon the Rabbis and other
more obscure Theologians, the hairs on the tail of the dog are counted and from their
differing turns and combinations letters are put together to create amazing words. By
Francis George, the Venetian.
7. Peace in Jerusalem, or The Settlement of the most passionate disagreement between
Rabbi Simeon Kimchi and Onkelos, On whether a human body composed (may God
forbid) from the consumption of pig flesh will be put away, annihilated, or purified on
the Resurrection, by the most enlightened Doctor Reuchlin.
8. The Judeo-Christian Pythagorus, in which 99 and 66 are shown to be the same number
if the page is turned upside down, by the more than angelic Giovanni Pico Della
Mirandola.
9. What you please out of what you please; Or the art of decyphering and finding some
treason in any intercepted letter, by Philips.
10. The Hercules of John Harington, or Concerning the method of emptying the dung
from Noah's Ark.
11. Believe you have something and you have it. A rule for antiquities: a great book on tiny
things, dictated by Walter Cope, written down by his wife, and translated into Latin
by his amanuensis John Pory.
12. The sub-savior: in which the enlightened, but barely enlightening, Hugh Broughton
surprisingly teaches that the Hebrew language is the secret of health, and that his
teachings are the secret of the language.
13. Martin Luther, On shortening the Lord's Prayer.
14. A Handful of Oak Trees, or The Art of Getting Ahold of Transcendentals. Written by
Raimond Sebond.
15. The Princely Ocean, or The Pyramid, or The Colossus, or The Abyss of Wits: where
by means of 60,000 letters to the Nobles of all nations (always sent and received in the
common tongues, in order to avoid ostentation) are related everything that is able to
be related concerning toothpicks and hangnails. They have been brought together and
reduced into a single collection, dedicated to each individual patron by John Florio, the
Italo-Englishman. On the first seventy pages are the headings of those things that this
book contains; the Diplomas of the Kings with their tides and the approval of
the inquisitors on the next 107; [and] poems in praise of the author in the next
ninety-seven books.
16. The Justice of England. The holiday work of Sir John Davies, On the Making of
Approximate Anagrams, and of Writing Little Mottoes in Rings.
17. Several little accounts added to the books of Panirolli; to the book on lost things is
added On the virtue and liberty of the people; begun by the Chaplain to John
Cade and perfected by Buchanan. To the book of things discovered, is added the
Many-Named Disease in English by Thomas Thorney and afterwards in Latin by
Thomas Campion, and On a desire for a wife after vows, by Carlstadt.
18. Bonaventura, On Removing the Word Not from the Ten Commandments, and adding
it to the Apostles' Creed.
19. One Book On False Knights, by Edward Prinne, Slightly Enlarged by Edward Chute.
20. On the Navigability of the Waters above the heavens, and whether Ships in the
Firmament will land there or on our shores on the Day of Judgment, by John Dee.
21. The Judges' Handbook, containing the many confessions of poisoners given to Justice
Manwood, and used by him afterwards in wiping his buttocks, and in examining his
evacuations; now recovered from his servants, and gathered together for his own use,
by John Hele.
20. On the Navigability of the Waters above the heavens, and whether Ships in the
Firmament will land there or on our shores on the Day of Judgment, by John Dee.
21. The Judges' Handbook, containing the many confessions of poisoners given to Justice
Manwood, and used by him afterwards in wiping his buttocks, and in examining his
evacuations; now recovered from his servants, and gathered together for his own use,
by John Hele.
22. On Equilibrium, Two Volumes. Or The Art of Settling on a Position in Controversy.
The First method is called simple, because given a controversy (such as, Is there such
a thing as transubstantiation?) yes and no are written on different but equal pieces of
paper, and placed on a pair of scales, and the heavier must be stuck to. The other
method is compound, because given a proposition from one side, another is given from
the other: such as Peter sits in Rome, and John sits in Rome, and even if they are
written in letters of equal size, and so on, the heavier must be chosen: by Erasmus of
Rotterdam.
23. Cardano, On the nothingness of a fart.
24. The Afternoon Belchings of Edward Hoby, or On Univocals, namely, On the Right of
Kings, and On Chimeras, such as the King's Evil, the French Disease, and so on.
25. The Spiritual Art of Enticing Women, or Egerton's Sermons Beneath Undergarments.
26. On the Living Pessary, and the Means of Producing every Female Disease, by Master
Butler of Cambridge.
27. The Brazen Head of Francis Bacon: On Robert I, King of England.
28. The Lawyers' Onion, or the Art of Weeping during trials, by the same. The More-than-
Half Uncivilized, or On the Mid-Point of the Tongue.
29. On the Diametrical Current through the Center from Pole to Pole, Navigable without
a Compass, by André Thevet.
30. The Quintessence of Hell; or the Private Chamber of the Infernal Regions, in which
is discussed the fifth area overlooked by Homer, Virgil, Dante, and other papist writers,
where Kings and their senses, in addition to the pain of damnation, are tortured by the
recollection of the events of the past.
31. An Encomium of Doctor Shaw, Chaplain of Richard III, by Doctor Barlow.
32. What not? or a confutation of all errors in Theology as well as in the other sciences, and
the mechanical arts, by all men, dead, living, and to be born, put together one night
after supper, by Doctor Sutcliffe.
33. On the Suitability for a Bishopric of a Puritan, by Doctor Robinson.
34. Tarlton, On the Privileges of Parliament.