-

precisely what makes the reviewer [the critic in Fraser] wonder; that there was so much to be said. I could not say a little that would have been at all worth saying; and I was fearful of making the book too long.

p. 442, 1. 7. "I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the months in the year, in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season."

The scene in "The Winter's Tale," IV. 3, writes Mr. Spedding (Bacon's Works, VI. 486), where Perdita presents the guests with flowers suited to their ages, has some expressions which, if this Essay had been contained in the earlier editions, would have made me suspect that Shakespeare had been reading it. As I am not aware that the resemblance has been observed, I will quote the passages to which I allude in connection with those which remind me of them.

p. 442, l. 11. "such things as are green all winter."

POL.

Reverend sirs,

For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:

Grace and remembrance be to you both,

And welcome to our shearing!

Shepherdess,

A fair one are you, well you fit our eyes
With flowers of winter.

p. 442, 1. 24. "lilies of all natures."

Now, my fair'st friend

I would I had some flowers o' the spring that might
Become your time of day; . .

In a controverted verse in "The Tempest," IV. 1,

Thy banks with pionèd and lilied brims,
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns,

to which it was objected that the above could not be the true reading because pionies and lilies do not bloom in April, this passage from the text has been quoted as a sufficient answer: "In April follow the double white violet, the wall-flower, the stock-gilliflower, the cowslip, flower-de-luces, and lilies of all natures; rosemary flowers, the tulip, the double peony.”. DYCE's Shakespeare, I. 251, ed. 1864. Mr. Dyce adds:

Here Mr. Grant White well remarks that "pioned [peoned] and lilied banks [brims]" are required “to make cold nymphs chaste crowns."

p. 443, 1. 5. "In July come gilliflowers in all varieties."

Sir, the year growing ancient,

Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth

Of trembling winter, — the fair'st flowers o' the season

Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyvors,

Which some call nature's bastards: . . .

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram ;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun,
And with him rises weeping; these are flowers
Of middle summer, and, I think, they're given
To men of middle age.

p. 444, l. 21. "burnet, wild thyme and watermints." This passage of
Bacon, wrote Mr. Sydney Walker ("Crit. Exam. &c." I. 247),
seems to prove the correctness of the received reading in "The
Winter's Tale," IV. 3:-
:-

Here's flowers for you,

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram.

ESSAY XLVIII.

p. 465, l. 11. p. 536, 1. 6, and 1. 24, 25. "glory and glorious."

66

Glory" is never employed now in the sense of vain glory, nor "glorious" in that of vain-glorious, as once they often were. TRENCH. Glossary.

Some took this for a glorious brag; others thought he [Alcibia des] was like enough to have done it. NORTH. Plutarch's Lives, p. 183.

King Henry VII. had nothing in him of vain-glory, but yet kept state and majesty to the height; being sensible that majesty maketh

the people bow, but vain-glory boweth to them.- History of King Henry VII. Works, VI. 241.

p. 466, 1. 4. "popularity." A courting of popular favor. "Popularity" was once the wooing, not, as now, the having won, the favor of the people. The word, which is passive now, was

Cato (the younger) charged Muræna, and indited him in open Court for popularity and ambition.-HOLLAND. Plutarch's Morals, p. 200, ed. 1657.

p. 466, last line. "the last impression." Comp. "Adv. of Learning," II. 22, § 4: :

A man shall find in the wisest sort of these relations which the Italians make touching conclaves, the natures of the several cardinals handsomely and lively painted forth: a man shall meet with in every day's conference, the denominations of sensitive, dry, formal, real, humorous, certain, huomo di prima impressione, huomo di ultima impressione, and the like.

ESSAY XLIX.

p. 469, 1. 21. "deprave." The meaning of this word is well illustrated in the following passage from Sir Thomas Browne's “Religio Medici," in the address "To the Reader:

I have lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent invention [printing], the name of his Majesty defamed, the honour of Parliament depraved, the writings of both depravedly, anticipatively, counterfeitly, imprinted. Works, II. xxxi. ed. Pickering, 1835.

You may abuse the works of any man; deprave his writings that you cannot equal.-DECKER'S Gull's Hornbook, p. 122, ed. Nott. Chapman dedicated his translation of "The Georgics" of Hesiod (1618) to Bacon. In the dedication is this passsge:

:

All greatness much more gracing impostors than men truly desertful. The worse depraving the better; and that so frontlessly. that shame and justice should fly the earth for them.

p. 469, l. 21. “disable.”

Our ancestors felt that to injure the character of another was the most effectual way of "disabling" him; and out of a sense of this they often used "disable" in the sense of to disparage, to speak slightingly of. TRENCH's Glossary.

Farewell, monsieur traveller. Look, you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country. It, IV. 1.

As You Like

p. 471, 1. 10. “these general contrivers of suits." As to the meaning of the word "these," see WALKER, Crit. Exam. &c. III. 264.

ESSAY L.

p. 472, 1. 14. "Crafty men contemn studies," etc. Of this celebrated passage Lord Macaulay wrote:

It will hardly be disputed that this is one to be "chewed and digested." We do not believe that Thucydides himself has anywhere compressed so much thought into so small a space.

p. 472, 1. 26..

Bacon censures Ramus for "introducing the canker of epitomes" ("Adv. of Learning," II. 17, § 11), which he elsewhere calls "the corruptions and moths of history." From the pages of a charming writer of the present day the following passage is taken :

Lord Bacon denounced abridgments with eloquent anger. But who can traverse all history? When Johnson was asked by Boswell if he should read Du Halde's account of China, he said, "Why, yes, as one reads such books, that is to say, consult it." A glance through the casement gives whatever knowledge of the interior is needful. An epitome is only a book shortened; and, as a general rule, the worth increases as the size lessens.

-

p. 472, 1. 27. "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man." This Essay is the first in the original edition of 1597. But in a tract published in 1596, entitled "The Landgrave of Hessen his Princely Receiving of her Majestie's Embassador in August 1596," dedicated by the author, Edward Monings, to "Marie, Countesse of Warwicke," and reprinted by Nichols, ("The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth," III. 394, ed. 1823,) is an instance of the plagiarism of which Bacon complains in the dedication of the edition of 1597:

1 The Translators of the Bible of 1611, in their "Address to the Reader," defined an epitomist to be " one that extinguished worthy whole volumes to bring his abridgments into request."

His education prince-like; generally knowen in all things, and excellent in many, seasoning his grave and more important studies for ability in judgment, with studies of pastime for retiring, as in poetrie, musike and the mathematikes; and for ornament in discourse in the languages, French, Italian, and English, wherein he is expert; reading much, conferring and writting much. He is a full man, a readie man, an exact man.

And as we learn from the dedication of the ed. 1597, that MS. copies had got abroad, it is probable that Monings had seen the Essay on Study, and being struck with the passage appropriated it.

p. 473, 1. 9.

- Lord Bacon's encomiums on the study of Mathematics, as affording the best discipline for an ill-regulated mind, are numerous and emphatic. In addition to the one contained in the text, he has said elsewhere,

Men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the Pure Mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures; so in the Mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and intended. — Adv. of Learning, II. 8, § 3. Works, III. 360. The observation in the Essay is repeated in the De Augmentis, VI. 4:

If one be bird-witted, that is easily distracted and unable to keep his attention as long as he should, Mathematics provides a remedy; for in them if the mind be caught away but a moment, the demonstration has to be commenced anew. - Works, IV. p. 495. Adv. of

Learning, II. 19, § 2.

--

p. 473, 1. 13. "for they are Cymini Sectores." See "Adv. of Learning," I. 7, § 7:

Antoninus Pius was called Cymini Sector, a carver or divider of cummin seed, which is one of the least seeds: such a patience he had and settled spirit to enter into the least and most exact differences of causes.