feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power. Both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. Francis Bacon. 1561-1626. (History, p. 96-102.) 45. OF STUDIES. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgement and disposition1 of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling 2 of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and 1. Disposition, apt distribution, arrangement of the details. 2. Marshalling. The original meaning of marshal was "master of the horse," fr. O. H. G. marahscalc (mähre, a horse, schalk, a servant). Fr. maréchal still means farrier, groom. It was the military duties of the marshal in feudal times that gave the word its modern meaning. 3. Humour. It was once believed that Some books are a man's disposition or temperament arose from the mixture in his composition of four humours or moistures, blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm, and that the predominance of any one of these made him humorous or whimsical. Hence the modern use of the word. 4. Curiously, with scrupulous care. Bacon himself defines his Essays as "certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously." with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others: but that would be only in the less important arguments," and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he reads little, he had need have much cunning,7 to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. "Abeunt studia in mores;" nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and reins, 10 shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head and the like; so if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are Cymini sectores." 11 If he be not apt to beat over 12 matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. 66 5. Arguments, subjects. Milton calls the subject of his Paradise Lost a "great argument." 6. Present, prompt, immediate. 7. Cunning. This word signified once merely knowledge or skill, without any notion of perversity. It is simply the O. E. cunnan, to know, the an of the infin. having become ing. See general note to extract 1. 8. That, that which. 9. Stond, hindrance, Gael. stad, an impediment. 10. Reins, the kidneys, Lat. renes. 11. Cymini sectores, hair-splitters. "He was called Cymini Sector, a carver or divider of cummin seed, which is one of the least of seeds."-Adv. of Learning, Book I., vii, 7. 12. Beat over; means much the same as "beat on" in The Tempest-to keep the thoughts busy on a particular subject. 46. OF BEAUTY. Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features; and that hath rather dignity of presence, than beauty of aspect. Neither is it almost seen, that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue; as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labour to produce excellency; and therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit; and study rather behaviour, than virtue. But this holds not always: for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael, the sophy of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour, is more than that of colour; and that of decent 2 and gracious 3 motion, more than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more 4 trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions: the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them. Not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that, if you examine them part by part, you shall find never a good; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times more amiable; * "pulchrorum autumnus pulcher;" for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and, for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine, and vices blush. 1. Favour, countenance. 2. Decent, becoming, appropriate. 3. Gracious, graceful; used here in the subjective sense. So in Shakespeare, Hamlet, i. 1, we have "So hallowed and so gracious is the time." 4. More, greater; used once of size as of number. We have already had “the more" in the sense of "the higher in social position." │5. Trifler: a trifle properly means a small piece, and comes immediately from O. E. trifelan, to pound, to break in pieces; and that is clearly borrowed from L. L. tribulare, used by the monkish writers in the sense of to beat, to afflict, fr. tribulum, a threshing machine. 6. Amiable, lovely, Fr. aimable, Lat. amabilis. 47. OF DEFORMITY. Deformed persons are commonly even with nature; for as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) "void of natural affection;" and so they have their revenge of nature. Certainly there is a consent between the body and the mind, and where nature erreth in the one, she ventureth1 in the other: "Ubi peccat in uno, periclitatur in altero:" but because there is in man an election,2 touching the frame of his mind, and a necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclination are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline and virtue; therefore it is good to consider of deformity, not as a sign which is more deceivable,3 but as a cause which seldom faileth of the effect. Whosoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn; therefore, all deformed persons are extreme bold; first, as in their own defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in process of time by a general habit. Also it stirreth in them industry, and especially of this kind, to watch and observe the weakness of others, that they may have somewhat to repay. Again, in their superiors, it quencheth jealousy towards them, as persons that they think they may at pleasure despise : and it layeth their competitors and emulators asleep, as never believing they should be in possibility of advancement till they see them in possession so that upon the matter, in a great wit, deformity is an advantage to rising. Kings, in ancient times (and at this present in some countries), were wont to put great trust in eunuchs, because they that are envious towards all are more obnoxious and officious towards one; but yet their trust towards them hath rather been as to good spials,5 and good whisperers, than good magistrates and officers and much like is the reason of deformed persons. Still the ground is, they will, if they be of spirit, seek to free themselves from scorn; which must be either by virtue or malice; and, therefore, let it not be marvelled, if sometimes they prove excellent persons; as was Agesilaus, Zanger the son of Solyman, Æsop, Gasca, president of Peru; and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with others. 48. Robert Burton. 1576-1640. (History, p. 102.) From the ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. THE POWER OF LOVE. Bocace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latine, Bebelius into verse,' of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper 2 man of person, and the governour of Cyprus son, but a very ass; inasmuch that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farm-house he had in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was, walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia, a burgomaster's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side, in a little thicket, fast asleep in her smocke, where she had newly bathed herself. When Cymon saw her, he stood leaning on his staffe, gaping on her immovable, and in a maze: at last he fell so far in love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up; to bethink what he was; would needs follow her to the city, and for her sake began to be civil,3 to learn to sing and dance, to play on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and complements, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of. In brief, he became from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did many valorous exploits, and all for the 1. The same tale is also the subject of one of Dryden's Fables. 2. Proper, tall, well-looking; so used occasionally by Shakespeare. Civility 3. Civil, civilized, refined. retained the sense of our modern civilization even until the time of Dr. Johnson, who does not recognize the latter word in its present meaning at |