Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.1

Of Adversity.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Of Marriage and Single Life.

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.'

Ibid.

Men in great place are thrice servants, servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of

business.

Of Great Place.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."

Of Boldness.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to

fall.

The remedy is worse than the disease.*

1 As aromatic plants bestow

No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crushed or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.

Of Goodness.

Of Seditions.

GOLDSMITH: The Captivity, act i.

The good are better made by ill,
As odours crushed are sweeter still.

ROGERS: Jacqueline, stanza 3.

2 BURTON (quoted): Anatomy of Melancholy, part iii. sect. 2, memb. 5,

subsect. 5.

3 Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes;

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,

Aspiring to be angels, men rebel.

POPE: Essay on Man, ep. i. line 125.

There are some remedies worse than the disease. PUBLIUS SYRUS:

Maxim 301.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.

Of Atheism.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.1

Ibid.

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

Of Travel. Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.2

Of Empire.

In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a point of cunning to borrow the name of the world; as to say, "The world says," or "There is a speech abroad."

Of Cunning.

There is a cunning which we in England call "the turning of the cat in the pan; " which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him.

Ibid.

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

Ibid.

It hath been an opinion that the French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are; but howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man and man.

Of Seeming Wise.

1 Who are a little wise the best fools be. - DONNE: Triple Fool. A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion. - FULLER: The Holy State. The True Church Antiquary.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. - POPE: Essay on Criticism, part ii. line 15.

2 Kings are like stars: they rise and set; they have

The worship of the world, but no repose.

SHELLEY: Hellas.

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic. A man's own observation, what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health. Of Regimen of Health. Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order. Of Discourse. Men's thoughts are much according to their inclination, their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions.

1

Of Custom and Education. Chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.2

Of Fortune.

If a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible.3

Ibid.

Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

Of Youth and Age.

Virtue is like a rich stone, - best plain set.
God Almighty first planted a garden.'

Of Beauty.

Of Gardens.

And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air.

Ibid.

1 Of similar meaning, "Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought."

See Shakespeare, page 90.

2 Every

man is the architect of his own fortune. - PSEUDO-SALLUST:

Epist. de Rep. Ordin. ii. 1.

His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune.

SYRUS: Maxim 283.

8 Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you

that Fortune is blind.

SHAKESPEARE: Henry V. act iii. sc. 6.

4 God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

COWLEY: The Garden, Essay v

God made the country, and man made the town.

COWPER: The Task, book i. line 749.

Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes (Divine Nature gave the fields, human art built the cities).-VARRO: De Re Rustica, iii. 1.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Of Studies. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Ibid.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Ibid.

The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.1 Of Vicissitude of Things. Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. Proposition touching Amendment of Laws. Knowledge is power. — Nam et ipsa scientia potestas

est.2

Meditationes Sacra. De Hæresibus.

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.3

Historia Vita et Mortis; Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. i. Exper. 100. When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded. Letter of Expostulation to Coke.

1 The vicissitude of things. - STERNE: Sermon xvi. GIFFORD: Contemplation.

2 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength. — Proverbs xxiv. 5.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. - JOHNSON: Rasselas, chap. xiii.

8 The bee enclosed and through the amber shown,

Seems buried in the juice which was his own.

MARTIAL: book iv. 32, vi. 15 (Hay's translation).

I saw a flie within a beade

Of amber cleanly buried.

HERRICK: On a Fly buried in Amber.

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms.

POPE: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, line 169.

"Antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi." These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.1

Advancement of Learning. Book i. (1605.)

For the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's

estate.

Ibid.

The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.2

Book ii.

It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires

of the mind.

Ibid.

1 As in the little, so in the great world, reason will tell you that old age or antiquity is to be accounted by the farther distance from the beginning and the nearer approach to the end, the times wherein we now live being in propriety of speech the most ancient since the world's creation. - GEORGE HAKEWILL: An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World. London, 1627.

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it? - PASCAL: Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum.

It is worthy of remark that a thought which is often quoted from Francis Bacon occurs in [Giordano] Bruno's "Cena di Cenere," published in 1584: I mean the notion that the later times are more aged than the earlier. — WHEWELL: Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii p. 198. London,

1847.

We are Ancients of the earth,

And in the morning of the times.

2 The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before. Advancement of Learning (ed. Dewey).

TENNYSON: The Day Dream. (L'Envoi.)

The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted. - DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lib. vi. sect. 63.

Spiritalis enim virtus sacramenti ita est ut lux: etsi per immundos transeat, non inquinatur (The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light: although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted). - SAINT AUGUSTINE: Works, vol. iii., In Johannis Evang. cap. i. tr. v. sect. 15.

The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted. - Lyly : Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit (Arber's reprint), p. 43.

The sun

his beam.-TAYLOR: Holy Living, chap. i. p. 3.

reflecting upon the mud of strands and shores is unpolluted in

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sun beam.-MILTON: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.