lius saith, Hominem delirum, qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera. Of which kind also Plato, in his Protagoras, bringeth in Prodicus in scorn, and maketh him make a speech that consisteth of distinctions from the beginning to the end. Generally such men in all deliberations find ease to be of the negative side, and affect a credit to object' and foretell difficulties; for when propositions are denied there is an end of them; but if they be allowed it requireth a new work: which false point of wisdom is the bane of business. To conclude, there is no 19 decaying merchant or inward beggar hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their wealth as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make shift to get opinion; but let no man choose them for employment; for certainly, you were better take for business a man somewhat absurd over-formal.

derivative of blanch-to make white. If so, to blanch the matter will be to put it out of sight, and, as it were, to erase it and leave a blank in its stead; to blanch the obscure places will be to treat them as if the passages were blanks. Blanch, to make white, is certainly a word which Bacon uses elsewhere: 'It is an offence horrible and odious, and cannot be blanched nor made fair, but foul.' Letters and Life, iv. 272.

affect a credit to object &c.] i, e. attempt to get credit by objecting. Lat. existimationem aucupantur ex scrupulis et difficultatibus proponendis et praedicendis.

allowed] i. e. approved, accepted. Lat. sin probatur. Conf. 'That young men travel under some tutor or grave servant, I allow well.' Essay 18, and passim.

h inward beggar] i. e. a beggar in point of fact, but not known to be such. Lat. decoctor rei familiaris occultus.

than

i you were better take &c.] So, in Essay 27: 'A man were better relate himself to a statua or picture.' And, 'A judge were better be a briber than a respecter of persons.' Works, iii. 450.

absurd] probably blunt and rough in manner. The word occurs three times in the Essays. In Essay 6 'an absurd silence' seems to mean a roughmannered refusal to answer; since silence has nothing in it absurd in the ordinary sense of the word. In the passage in the text, the contrast presumably is between the over-formal man, too perfect in compliments and too full of respects, and the man who is negligent of them to a fault. In Essay 47 froward and absurd are joined as epithets of the same men, and as qualities fitting them to negociate business that doth not well bear itself out. Bacon's absurd' seems to be a Latinism, as many of his words are. Giving a disagreeable sound, harsh, rough, rude, are among the primary senses of absurdus.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

Heauton. iii. 5, 8.

P. 179, 1. 4. as the apostle saith] 2 Tim. iii. 5. 1. 7. magno conatu nugas] 1.9. these formalists &c.] Bacon is probably making special allusion here to Sir Henry Hobart and to the Earl of Salisbury. Conf. 'The attorney (i.e. Sir Henry Hobart) sorteth not so well with his present place, being a man timid and scrupulous both in parliament and in other business, and one that in a word was made fit for the late Lord Treasurer's bent, which was to do little with much formality and protestation, whereas the now solicitor (i. e. Bacon himself) going more roundly to work,' &c. Letters and Life, iv. 381.

P. 180, 1. 3. when they know within themselves &c.] The following passage is a good instance in point: 'It is certain that we had in use at one time, for sea fight, short arrows, which they called sprights, without any other heads save wood sharpened: which were discharged out of muskets, and would pierce through the sides of ships where a bullet would not pierce. But this dependeth upon one of the greatest secrets in all nature; which is, that similitude of substance will cause attraction where the body is wholly freed from the motion of gravity: for if that were taken away lead would draw lead, and gold would draw gold, and iron would draw iron, without the help of the loadstone. But this same motion of weight or gravity (which is a mere motion of matter and hath no affinity with the form or kind) doth kill the other motion, except itself be killed by a violent motion; as in these instances of arrows; for then the motion of attraction by similitude of substance beginneth to show itself. But we shall handle this point of nature fully in due place.' The story about the arrows or sprights is a sea-yarn told by Sir Richard Hawkins. The philosophical explanation of it as 'one of the greatest secrets in all nature' is Bacon's own. Works, ii. 564.

1. 8. as Cicero saith] In Pisonem, end of cap. 6.

1. 19. A. Gellius] We learn from a passage in the Advancement of Learning that Bacon was aware that it was about Seneca that these words or something like them had been used. 'As was said of Seneca,

"Verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera."'

Works, iii. 286.

Now, the comments of Aulus Gellius on the style and matter of Seneca are found in the Noctes Atticae, xii. cap. 2. He is termed 'nugator homo' verborum Senecae piget: inepti et insubidi et insulsi hominis joca non praeteribo, &c. But the words in Bacon's text do not occur. The nearest approach to them is in the better balanced and more considered censure of Quintilian: 'Si non omnia sua

amâsset; si rerum pondera minutissimis sententiis non fregisset, consensu potius eruditorum quam puerorum amore comprobaretur.' De Instit. Orat. x. cap. I, sec. 130.

It would seem that Bacon had read both the above passages, and by confusing their authorship and adding something of his own, had evolved the sentence which he ascribes to Aulus Gellius. He thus shows us, all the more clearly, what his opinion of Seneca must have been.

Ρ. 181, 1. 2. Plato] Εἰπόντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα, ὁ Πρόδικος, Καλῶς μοι, ἔφη, δοκεῖς λέγειν, ὦ Κριτία Χρὴ γὰρ τοὺς ἐν τοιοῖσδε λόγοις παραγιγνομένους κοινοὺς μὲν εἶναι ἀμφοῖν τοῖν διαλεγομένοιν ἀκροατάς, ἴσους δὲ μή· ἔστι γὰρ οὐ ταὐτόν· κοινῇ μὲν γὰρ ἀκοῦσαι δεῖ ἀμφοτέρων, μὴ ἴσον δὲ νεῖμαι ἑκατέρῳ, ἀλλὰ τῷ μὲν σοφωτέρῳ πλέον, τῷ δὲ ἀμαθεστέρῳ ἔλαττον. ἐγὼ μὲν καὶ αὐτὸς . . . ἀξιῶ ὑμᾶς συγχωρεῖν καὶ ἀλλήλοις περὶ τῶν λόγων ἀμφισβητεῖν μέν, ἐρίζειν δὲ μή· ἀμφισβητοῦσι μὲν γὰρ καὶ δι' εὔνοιαν οἱ φίλοι τοῖς φίλοις, ἐρίζουσι δὲ οἱ διάφοροί τε καὶ ἐχθροὶ ἀλλήλοις, κ.τ.λ. Protagoras, p. 337.

XXVII.

OF FRIENDSHIP.

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech, Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society in any man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides, the Candian;

a conversation] i. e. intercourse or way of life. Conf. Our conversation is in heaven.' Philippians iii. 20. And, Such as were first seated in their possessions and entertained societie, were the first that brought

in civill conversation, and by little and little were purified, and so attained to the perfection of civill government.' Edmundes, Caesar's Commentaries, Obs. on lib. v. cap.

4.

1Ο

Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little, Magna civitas, magna solitudo; because in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the 10 most part, which is in less neighbourhoods: but we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of 20 stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift" or confession.

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friend30 ship whereof we speak so great, as they purchase it many times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness for princes, in regard of the distance of their

b civil shrift] as opposed to religious. The French (of Baudoin) expresses this by une confession voluntaire, since in the Church of Rome confession to

a priest is set down as obligatory. Vide Decree of the 4th Lateran Council, canon 21, quoted in Keble's note to Hooker's Eccl. Pol. bk. vi. ch. 4. sec. 3.

fortune from that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this fruit, except (to make themselves capable thereof) they raise some persons to be as it were companions, and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons the name of favourites or privadoes, as if it were matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them participes curarum; for it is that which tieth the knot. And we see plainly that this hath been done, 10 not by weak and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have oftentimes joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call them in the same manner, using the word which is received between private men.

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey (after surnamed the Great) to that height that Pompey vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch; for when he had carried the consulship for a friend of his, against the 20 pursuit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be quiet; for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun setting. With Julius Cæsar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power with him to draw him forth to his death: for when Cæsar would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages and specially a dream of Calpurnia, this man 30 lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him

e sorteth to i. e. turneth to. Lat. non nisi praejudicio fit.

a conversation] here tied down by the context to intercourse or intimacy.

For this sense conf. 'All princes and all men are won either by merit or conversation.' Letters and Life, iii.

340.