9. And lastly, it will be useful likewise to enquire into the cause why each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont to be very observant of all his master’s commands, yet withal used to ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be obeyed as pedagogues and lawgivers are, except they have reason to back what they say. And that they will not want, when they speak well; and if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and frivolous. But nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason of such trivial speeches as these, and enquire in what sense they are spoken: It bodes ill luck, when vessels you set up, To place the ladle on the mixing-cup. Who from his chariot to another’s leaps, Seldom his seat without a combat keeps.[66] But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination, as to those that follow: The boldest men are daunted oftentimes, When they’re reproached with their parents’ crimes:[67] When any man is crushed by adverse fate, His spirit should be low as his estate. And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men’s lives by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: “Wherefore is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited because of my father’s defects?” For he that can encounter such speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of Heraclitus, that Whate’er is said, though void of sense and wit, The size of a fool’s intellect doth fit, will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken. 10. These things therefore may be of use to preserve us from the hurt we might get by the study of poems. Now, as on a vine the fruit oftentimes lies shadowed and hidden under its large leaves and luxuriant branches, so in the poet’s phrases and fictions that encompass them there are also many profitable and useful things concealed from the view of young men. This, however, ought not to be suffered; nor should we be led away from things themselves thus, but rather adhere to such of them as tend to the promoting of virtue and the well forming of our manners. It will not be altogether useless therefore, to treat briefly in the next place of passages of that nature. Wherein I intend to touch only at some particulars, leaving all longer discourses, and the trimming up and furnishing them with a multitude of instances, to those who write more for show and ostentation.