imitating none, and inimitable by any. And as in your civil estate
there appeareth to be an emulation and contention of your Majesty's
virtue with your fortune; a virtuous disposition with a fortunate
regiment; a virtuous expectation (when time was) of your greater
fortune, with a prosperous possession thereof in the due time; a
virtuous observation of the laws of marriage, with most blessed and
happy fruit of marriage; a virtuous and most Christian desire of
peace, with a fortunate inclination in your neighbour princes
thereunto: so likewise in these intellectual matters there seemeth
to be no less contention between the excellency of your Majesty's
gifts of Nature and the universality and perfection of your
learning. For I am well assured that this which I shall say is no
amplification at all, but a positive and measured truth; which is,
that there hath not been since Christ's time any king or temporal
monarch which hath been so learned in all literature and erudition,
divine and human. For let a man seriously and diligently revolve
and peruse the succession of the Emperors of Rome, of which Caesar
the Dictator (who lived some years before Christ) and Marcus
Antoninus were the best learned, and so descend to the Emperors of
Graecia, or of the West, and then to the lines of France, Spain,
England, Scotland, and the rest, and he shall find this judgment is
truly made. For it seemeth much in a king if, by the compendious
extractions of other men's wits and labours, he can take hold of any
superficial ornaments and shows of learning, or if he countenance
and prefer learning and learned men; but to drink, indeed, of the
true fountains of learning--nay, to have such a fountain of learning
in himself, in a king, and in a king born--is almost a miracle. And
the more, because there is met in your Majesty a rare conjunction,
as well of divine and sacred literature as of profane and human; so
as your Majesty standeth invested of that triplicity, which in great