4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent also. Correction may reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whetting in the world can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it. Such boys he consigneth over to other professions. Shipwrights and boat-makers will choose those crooked pieces of timber which other carpenters refuse. Those may make excellent merchants and mechanics who will not serve for scholars. He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. ON BOOKS From 'The Holy and Profane State' It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well-furnished armory. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many of them--built merely for uniformity--are without chimneys, and more without fires. Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied. LONDON From 'The Worthies of England' It is the second city in Christendom for greatness, and the first for good government. There is no civilized part of the world but it has heard thereof, though many with this mistake: that they conceive London to be the country and England but the city therein. Some have suspected the declining of the lustre thereof, because of late it vergeth so much westward, increasing in buildings, Covent Garden, etc. But by their favor (to disprove their fear) it will be found to burnish round about with new structures daily added thereunto. It oweth its greatness under God's divine providence to the well-conditioned river of Thames, which doth not (as some tyrant rivers of Europe) abuse its strength in a destructive way, but employeth its greatness in goodness, to be beneficial to commerce, by the reciprocation of the tide therein. Hence it was that when King James, offended with the city, threatened to remove his court to another place, the Lord Mayor (boldly enough) returned that "he might remove his court at his pleasure, but could not remove the river Thames."