"'But, Sir, I should really spoil any cause thrust on me so hastily.'—'Ye cannot spoil it, Alan,' said my father, 'that is the very cream of the business, man,—... the case is come to that pass that Stair or Arniston could not mend it, and I don't think even you, Alan, can do it much harm.'"
I am strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages. To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good teaching and mitigation of socials evils. But the remaining three were the fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them, about a century before the Reformation:
"Flen, flyys, and freris, populum domini male cædunt;
Thystlis and breris crescentia gramina lædunt.
Christe nolens guerras qui cuncta pace tueris,
Destrue per terras breris, flen, flyys, and freris.
Flen, flyys, and freris, foul falle hem thys fyften yeris,
For non that her is lovit flen, flyys ne freris."[[667]]
I should not be quite so savage with my second class. Taken together, they may be made to give useful warning to those who are engaged in learning under better auspices: aye, even useful hints; for bad things are very often only good things spoiled or misused. My plan is that of a predecessor in the time of Edward the Second: