And lastly, it will be useful likewise to enquire into the cause why each thing is said. For so Cato, when he was a boy, though he was wont to be very observant of all his master’s commands, yet withal used to ask the cause or reason why he so commanded. But poets are not to be obeyed as pedagogues and lawgivers are, except they have reason to back what they say. And that they will not want, when they speak well; and if they speak ill, what they say will appear vain and frivolous. But nowadays most young men very briskly demand the reason of such trivial speeches as these, and enquire in what sense they are spoken: It bodes ill luck, when vessels you set up, To place the ladle on the mixing-cup. Who from his chariot to another’s leaps, Seldom his seat without a combat keeps. But to those of greater moment they give credence without examination, as to those that follow: The boldest men are daunted oftentimes, When they’re reproached with their parents’ crimes: When any man is crushed by adverse fate, His spirit should be low as his estate. And yet such speeches relate to manners, and disquiet men’s lives by begetting in them evil opinions and unworthy sentiments, except they have learned to return answer to each of them thus: Wherefore is it necessary that a man who is crushed by adverse fate should have a dejected spirit? Yea, why rather should he not struggle against Fortune, and raise himself above the pressures of his low circumstances? Why, if I myself be a good and wise son of an evil and foolish father, does it not rather become me to bear myself confidently upon the account of my own virtue, than to be dejected and dispirited because of my father’s defects? For he that can encounter such speeches and oppose them after this manner, not yielding himself up to be overset with the blast of every saying, but approving that speech of Heraclitus, that Whate’er is said, though void of sense and wit, The size of a fool’s intellect doth fit, will reject many such things as falsely and idly spoken.