For _as it would ill become me_ to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool, So were there _a patch set on learning_ to see HIM in a _school_. [That would be a new 'school,' a new 'learning,' patching the 'defect' (as it would be called elsewhere) in the old.] _Dull_. You two are book-men. Can you tell me by your wit, etc. _Nath_. A rare talent. _Dull_. If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a talent. _Hol_. This is a gift that I have; simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it. _Nath_. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my parishioners; for their sons are well tutored by you, and their daughters profit very greatly under you; you are a good member of the COMMON-WEALTH. He is in earnest of course. Is the Poet so too? 'What is the end of study?'--let me know. 'O they have lived long in the alms-basket of WORDS,' is the criticism on this learning with which this showman, whoever he may he, explains his exhibition of it. And surely he must be, indeed, of the school of Antony Dull, and never fed with the dainties bred in a book, who does not see what it is that is criticised here;--that it is the learning of an unlearned time, of a barbarous time, of a vain, frivolous debased, wretched time, that has been fed long--always from "the alms-basket of words." And one who is acquainted already with the style of this school, who knows already its secret signs and stamp, would not need to be told to look again on the intellect of the letter for the nomination of the party writing, to the person written to, in order to see what source this pastime comes from,--what player it is that is behind the scene here. 'Whoe'er he be, he bears a mounting mind,' and beginning in the lowness of the actual, and collecting the principles that are in all actualities, the true forms that are forms in nature, and not in man's speech only, the new IDEAS of the New Academy, the ideas that are powers, with these 'simples' that are causes, he will reconstruct fortuitous conjunctions, he will make his poems in facts; he will find his Fairy Land in her kingdom whose iron chain he wears. 'The gentles were at their games,' and the soul of new ages was beginning its re-creations. For this is but the beginning of that 'Armada' that this Don Armado--who fights with sword and pen, in ambush and in the open field--will sweep his old enemy from the seas with yet. O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er, But there's more in me than thou'lt understand. Look how the father's face Lives in his issue; even so the race Of Shake-spear's mind and _manners_ brightly _shines_ In his _well turn'd_ and _true filed lines_, In each of which he seems to _shake_ a _lance_, As _brandished_ in the eyes of--[what?--]_Ignorance!_ BEN JONSON. _Ignorance!_--yes, that was the word.