all similitudes, and all wittie sayinges of most notable person- ages: And so, by one labour, he left to posteritie, three notable bookes, & namelie two his _Chiliades, Apophthegmata_ and _Similia_. Likewise, if a good student would bend him selfe to read diligently ouer Tullie, and with him also at // {_Plato._ the same tyme, as diligently _Plato_, & _Xenophon_, // {_Xenophon._ with his bookes of Philosophie, _Isocrates_, & // Cicero. {_Isocrates._ _Demosthenes_ with his orations, & _Aristotle_ with // {_Demosth._ his Rhetorickes: which fiue of all other, be // {_Aristotles._ those, whom _Tullie_ best loued, & specially followed: & would marke diligently in _Tullie_ where he doth _exprimere_ or _effingere_ (which be the verie propre wordes of Imitation) either, _Copiam Platonis_ or _venustatem Xenophontis, suauitatem Isocratis_, or _vim Demosthenis, propriam & puram subtilitatem Aristotelis_, and not onelie write out the places diligentlie, and lay them together orderlie, but also to conferre them with skilfull iudgement by those few rules, which I haue expressed now twise before: if that diligence were taken, if that order were vsed, what perfite knowledge of both the tonges, what readie and pithie vtterance in all matters, what right and deepe iudgement in all kinde of learnyng would follow, is scarse credible to be beleued. These bookes, be not many, nor long, nor rude in speach, nor meane in matter, but next the Maiestie of Gods holie word, most worthie for a man, the louer of learning and honestie, to spend his life in. Yea, I haue heard worthie _M. Cheke_ many tymes say: I would haue a good student passe and iorney through all Authors both _Greke_ and _Latin_: but he that will dwell in these few bookes onelie: first, in Gods holie Bible, and than ioyne with it, _Tullie_ in _Latin, Plato, Aristotle: Xenophon: Isocrates_: and _Demosthenes_ in _Greke_: must nedes proue an excel- lent man. Some men alreadie in our dayes, haue put to their helping handes, to this worke of Imitation. As _Peri-_ // _Perionius._ _onius, Henr. Stephanus in dictionario Ciceroniano_, // _H. Steph._ and _P. Victorius_ most praiseworthelie of all, in // _P. Victor-_ that his learned worke conteyning xxv. bookes _de_ // _ius._ _varia lectione_: in which bookes be ioyned diligentlie together the best Authors of both the tonges where one doth seeme to imitate an other. But all these, with _Macrobius, Hessus_, and other, be no 276 _The second booke teachyng_