differences of wits, which includes the sentence already referred to. “Such [_i.e._, haphazard and inconsistent] are all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne.” The notes now keep close to literature throughout in substance, though their titles (_e.g._, _Ignorantia animæ_), and so forth, may seem wider. A heading, _De Claris Oratoribus_ (p. 26), leads to yet another of the purple passages of the book—that on Bacon, in which is intercalated a curious _Scriptorum catalogus_, limited, for the most part, though Surrey and Wyatt are mentioned, to prose writers. And then for some time ethics, politics, and other subjects, again have Ben’s chief attention.[276] ----- Footnote 272: It may be observed that the shorter aphorisms rise to the top—at least the beginning. Footnote 273: “He is upbraidingly called a poet.... The professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap.” Footnote 274: It is here that Ben borrows from Petronius not merely the sentiment but the phrase, “umbratical doctor” (see vol. i. p. 244 note). Footnote 275: “Taylor the Water-Poet,” certainly bad enough as a poet—though not as a man. But the selection of Spenser as the other pole is an invaluable correction to the sweeping attack in the _Conversations_. Footnote 276: Perhaps, indeed, an exception should be made in favour of the section _De malignitate Studentium_, p. 34, which reiterates the necessity of “the exact knowledge of all virtues and their contraries” on the part of the poet. -----