they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions would
never fall in entirely with the counsels of philosophers, and this he
himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.

"Do not you think that if I were about any king, proposing good laws to
him, and endeavouring to root out all the cursed seeds of evil that I
found in him, I should either be turned out of his court, or, at least,
be laughed at for my pains? For instance, what could I signify if I were
about the King of France, and were called into his cabinet council, where
several wise men, in his hearing, were proposing many expedients; as, by
what arts and practices Milan may be kept, and Naples, that has so often
slipped out of their hands, recovered; how the Venetians, and after them
the rest of Italy, may be subdued; and then how Flanders, Brabant, and
all Burgundy, and some other kingdoms which he has swallowed already in
his designs, may be added to his empire? One proposes a league with the
Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it, and that he
ought to communicate counsels with them, and give them some share of the
spoil till his success makes him need or fear them less, and then it will
be easily taken out of their hands; another proposes the hiring the
Germans and the securing the Switzers by pensions; another proposes the
gaining the Emperor by money, which is omnipotent with him; another
proposes a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to cement it,
the yielding up the King of Navarre's pretensions; another thinks that
the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on by the hope of an alliance, and
that some of his courtiers are to be gained to the French faction by
pensions. The hardest point of all is, what to do with England; a treaty
of peace is to be set on foot, and, if their alliance is not to be
depended on, yet it is to be made as firm as possible, and they are to be
called friends, but suspected as enemies: therefore the Scots are to be
kept in readiness to be let loose upon England on every occasion; and