I have often purposely put him upon arguments quite wide of his profession, wherein I found he had so clear an insight, so quick an apprehension, so solid a judgment, that a man would have thought he had never practised any other thing but arms, and been all his life employed in affairs of State.
These are great and vigorous natures, "Queis arte benigna Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan." ["Whom benign Titan (Prometheus) has framed of better clay." -- Juvenal, xiv.

34.] that can keep themselves upright in despite of a pedantic education.

But it is not enough that our education does not spoil us; it must, moreover, alter us for the better.
Some of our Parliaments, when they are to admit officers, examine only their learning; to which some of the others also add the trial of understanding, by asking their judgment of some case in law; of these the latter, methinks, proceed with the better method; for although both are necessary, and that it is very requisite they should be defective in neither, yet, in truth, knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment; the last may make shift without the other, but the other never without this.

For as the Greek verse says-- ["To what use serves learning, if understanding be away." -- Apud Stobaeus, tit.iii., p.

37 (1609).] Would to God that, for the good of our judicature, these societies were as well furnished with understanding and conscience as they are with knowledge.
"Non vita, sed scolae discimus." ["We do not study for life, but only for the school." -- Seneca, Ep., 106.] We are not to tie learning to the soul, but to work and incorporate them together: not to tincture it only, but to give it a thorough and perfect dye; which, if it will not take colour, and meliorate its imperfect state, it were without question better to let it alone.