19. 'subtile-intricate. Method and arrangement are helps; but when applied in excess they become a hindrance.

20. ' unseasonable motion '-moving in a matter at an unsuitable time, which can do no good, and is merely waste trouble. 21. 'somewhat conceived in writing'a scheme of the business (or paper of agenda) previously prepared.

22. 'pregnant of direction-suggestive of the best course to adopt.

ANALYSIS OF ESSAY XXV.

I. Dispatch in business must be measured by the real and ultimate saving of time, not by the immediate saving.

II. The means for securing dispatch are-

I. Patience at the outset.

2. Keeping carefully to the point at issue, except when
divergence may conciliate opposition.

3. Method and arrangement of subject for consideration.
4. Keeping the preparation and execution in the hands of a
few.

5. Previously preparing statement of agenda.

XXVI.-OF SEEMING WISE. (1612.)

Ir 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;1 for as the Apostle saith of godliness, Having a show of godliness, but denying the power thereof;'2 so certainly there are, in points of wisdom and sufficiency, that do nothing or little very solemnly; magno conatu nugas.'4

It is a ridiculous thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment,5 to see what shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives to make superficies to seem body, that hath depth and bulk. Some are so close and reserved, as they will not show their wares but by a dark light, and seem almost to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others

to know of that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves with countenance and gesture, and are wise by signs; as Cicero saith of Piso, that when he answered him he fetched one of his brows up to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin; 'Respondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad mentum depresso supercilio; crudelitatem tibi non placere. Some think to bear it 10 by speaking a great word, and being peremptory; and go on, and take by admittance that which they cannot make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem to despise, or make light of it as impertinent or curious: 11 and so would have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never without a difference, and commonly by amusing men with a subtilty, blanch the matter;12 of whom A. Gellius saith, 'Hominem delirum, qui verborum minuțiis rerum frangit pondera.'13 Of which kind 14 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 15 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 decaying merchant, or inward beggar, 16 hath so many tricks to uphold the credit of their wealth as these empty persons have to maintain the credit of their sufficiency.

17

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 than over-formal.18

NOTES ON ESSAY XXVI.

1. 'between man and man'—with regard to individual men. 2. 2 Tim. iii, 5.

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3. there are-i.e. there are some men who, when their profes

sion of wisdom or ability is put to the test, are found to have made a great fuss about nothing.

4. (Perform) trifles with great effort.

5. judgment-discernment; power of distinguishing between real things and shams.

6. formalists'-persons who try to impose upon others by mere

appearances.

7. 'prospectives' or perspectives (sometimes also perspicils)—optical glasses, such as we now call telescopes and stereoscopes. Bacon here seems to refer to the latter, which are optical instruments constructed so as to give to pictures the appearance of solid forms as seen in nature.

'One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons,

A natural perspective that is and is not '-Twelfth Night.

"For Sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears,
Divides one thing entire to many objects;
Like perspectives which, rightly gazed upon,
Show nothing but confusion, eyed awry

Distinguish form'-Shakespeare's Richard II.

8. When they are conscious that they are speaking of something which they are ignorant of, they speak vaguely and obscurely, with the object of deceiving others into the belief that they really know something about it, but are prevented by some reason or other from speaking freely.

9. 'With one eyebrow raised to your forehead, the other lowered to your chin, you answer that you do not approve of cruelty' — Cicero, In Pisonem, vi.

10. 'bear it'-carry their point by force; overbear others. He is speaking of those who try to make a reputation for cleverness by using big words, and being dogmatic ( peremptory') and blustering (go on '); and impudently assuming for granted (take by admittance') that which they are unable to prove and maintain ('make good').

II. 'impertinent or curious'-either beside the point, or else a subtle nicety that they decline to take any notice of.

12. Some are for ever introducing verbal quibbles and trivial distinctions, designed craftily to divert attention from the real subject, and to gloss over their ignorance.

13. A foolish man who fritters away the weight of matters by nice quibbles upon words.'

Aulus Gellius was a Roman writer of the second century, who wrote Noctes Attica, a book consisting partly of miscellaneous passages selected from ancient authors and partly of original observations by the compiler.

It is said that the quotation is incorrectly assigned to Aulus Gellius, and is from Quintilian (x, 1), a famous Roman rhetorician of the first century.

14. 'of which kind'—as an example of which class of men. Plato

(B.C. 429-347), in one of his dialogues, called Protagoras (after one of the principal characters introduced in it, who was a celebrated sophist at Athens), brings forward Prodicus, who talks with great affectation of eloquence, and is extremely nice in his choice of words.

15. 'find ease,' etc.-find it easier to deny the statements of others than to advance and maintain statements of their own, and

try to get a reputation ('affect a credit') by objecting and interposing difficulties when others speak.

16. 'inward beggar'-a secret beggar; one who really lives by what he can get from others, and yet adopts numerous crafty devices to hide the fact that he is a beggar.

17. 'make shift to get opinion'-manage to earn a reputation. 18. You had better employ a man who is content to be thought a fool than one who is such but tries to conceal it.

'You were better' is an obsolete impersonal construction, meaning (it) were better (for) you; like if you please for if (it) please you or me seems for (to) me (it) seems.

Thou wer't better gall the devil'-King John, IV, iii, 95.

'I were best leave him '-1 Henry VI, V, iii, 82.

'You were best go to bed'-2 Henry VI, V, i, 196.

ANALYSIS OF ESSAY XXVI.

I. Some men, if not whole nations, try to appear wiser than they really are.

II. The devices commonly used for this purpose:

1. Feigned reserve.

2. Affectation of mystery by countenance and gesture.

3. Peremptoriness and bluster.

4. Pretence of despising what is said by others.

5. Crafty quibbling about words.

6. Resorting to the negative plan of objecting to what is said by others.

III. Such persons ought not to be employed, for they are worse servants than downright fools.

XXVII.-OF FRIENDSHIP. (1612, re-written 1625.) IT had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words that in that speech, 'Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god: '1 for it is most true, that a natural and

secret hatred and aversion 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:2 such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides, the Candian; 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 most part, which is in less neighbourhoods: but we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere5 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.

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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 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, flower 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 10 or confession.

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