I must have regard as well to those from whom my learning is borrowed, that they may say they meant it so, as to those for whom it is borrowed, that they may say they understand it.” The writer who does otherwise may be thought plain by those who seek nothing far, but if those who call for plainness are always to be pleased, and dealt with so daintily that they are put to no pains to learn and enquire, when they find themselves in a difficulty through their own ignorance; if they must be made a lure for learning to descend to, rather degenerating herself than teaching them to look up, what is the use of skill? He who made the earth made hills and dales, heights and plains, smooth places and rough, and yet all good of their own kind. Plainness is good for a pleasant course, and a popular style is in place in ordinary argument, where no art is needed because the reader knows none, and the matter can be simply expressed, being indeed in her best colours when she is dressed for common purposes. Likewise this alleged hardness, though it belong to the matter, has its special use in whetting people’s wits, and making a deep impression, where what seems dark contains something that must be considered thrice before it is mastered. Labour is the coin which is current in heaven, for which and by which Almighty God sells His best wares, though in His great goodness He sometimes does more for some in giving them quickness and intelligence, even without great labour, than any labour can do for others, in order to let us know that His mercy is the mistress when our labour learns best. But in our ordinary life, if carpeting be knighting, where is necessary defence? If easy understanding be the readiest learning, then wake not my lady; she learns as she lies. If all things are hard which everyone thinks to be so, where is the privilege and benefit of study? What is the use of study, if what we get by labour is condemned as too hard for those that do not study. I will not allege that the learned men of old made use of obscure expressions in matters of religion in order to win reverence towards a subject that belonged to another world and could not be fully dealt with in ordinary speech, nor that the old wisdom was expressed in riddles, proverbs, fables, oracles, and mystic verses, in order to draw men on to study, and fix in the memory what was carefully considered before it was uttered. Are any of our oldest and best writers whom we now study, and who have been thought the greatest, each in his kind, ever since they first wrote, understood at once after a single reading, even though those who are studying them know their tongue as well as we know English--nay, even better, because it is more intricate? Or is their manner of writing to be disapproved of as dark, because the ignorant reader or fastidious student cannot straightway rush into it? That they fell into that compressed kind of writing owing to