faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness
of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of
your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the
facility and order of your elocution: and I have often thought that
of all the persons living that I have known, your Majesty were the
best instance to make a man of Plato's opinion, that all knowledge
is but remembrance, and that the mind of man by Nature knoweth all
things, and hath but her own native and original notions (which by
the strangeness and darkness of this tabernacle of the body are
sequestered) again revived and restored: such a light of Nature I
have observed in your Majesty, and such a readiness to take flame
and blaze from the least occasion presented, or the least spark of
another's knowledge delivered. And as the Scripture saith of the
wisest king, "That his heart was as the sands of the sea;" which,
though it be one of the largest bodies, yet it consisteth of the
smallest and finest portions; so hath God given your Majesty a
composition of understanding admirable, being able to compass and
comprehend the greatest matters, and nevertheless to touch and
apprehend the least; whereas it should seem an impossibility in
Nature for the same instrument to make itself fit for great and
small works. And for your gift of speech, I call to mind what
Cornelius Tacitus saith of Augustus Caesar: Augusto profluens, et
quae principem deceret, eloquentia fuit. For if we note it well,
speech that is uttered with labour and difficulty, or speech that
savoureth of the affectation of art and precepts, or speech that is
framed after the imitation of some pattern of eloquence, though
never so excellent; all this hath somewhat servile, and holding of
the subject. But your Majesty's manner of speech is, indeed,
prince-like, flowing as from a fountain, and yet streaming and
branching itself into Nature's order, full of facility and felicity,