purpose, till, suspecting she might be carried to the infernal regions, she, with great lamentation and abundance of tears, importuned Jupiter to restore her; and with much ado prevailed so far as to recover and bring her away, if she had tasted nothing there. This proved a hard condition upon the mother, for Proserpine was found to have eaten three kernels of a pomegranate. Ceres, however, desisted not, but fell to her entreaties and lamentations afresh, insomuch that at last it was indulged her that Proserpine should divide the year betwixt her husband and her mother, and live six months with the one and as many with the other. After this, Theseus and Perithous, with uncommon audacity, attempted to force Proserpine away from Pluto’s bed, but happening to grow tired in their journey, and resting themselves upon a stone in the realms below, they could never rise from it again, but remain sitting there forever. Proserpine, therefore, still continued queen of the lower regions, in honor of whom there was also added this grand privilege, that though it had never been permitted any one to return after having once descended thither, a particular exception was made, that he who brought a golden bough as a present to Proserpine, might on that condition descend and return. This was an only bough that grew in a large dark grove, not from a tree of its own, but like the mistletoe from another, and when plucked away a fresh one always shot out in its stead.
EXPLANATION.—This fable seems to regard natural philosophy, and searches deep into that rich and fruitful virtue and supply in subterraneous bodies, from whence all the things upon the earth’s surface spring, and into which they again relapse and return. By Proserpine, the ancients denoted that ethereal spirit shut up and detained within the earth, here represented by Pluto,—the spirit being separated from the superior globe, according to the expression of the poet.[648] This spirit is conceived as ravished, or snatched up by the earth, because it can in no way be detained, when it has time and opportunity to fly off, but is only wrought together and fixed by sudden intermixture and comminution, in the same manner as if one should endeavor to mix air with water, which cannot otherwise be done than by a quick and rapid agitation, that joins them together in froth whilst the air is thus caught up by the water. And it is elegantly added, that Proserpine was ravished whilst she gathered narcissus flowers, which have their name from numbedness or stupefaction; for the spirit we speak of is in the fittest disposition to be embraced by terrestrial matter when it begins to coagulate, or grow torpid as it were.
It is an honor justly attributed to Proserpine, and not to any other wife of the gods, that of being the lady or mistress of her husband, because this spirit performs all its operations in the subterraneal regions, whilst Pluto, or the earth, remains stupid, or as it were ignorant of them.
The ether, or the efficacy of the heavenly bodies, denoted by Ceres, endeavors with infinite diligence to force out this spirit, and restore it to its pristine state. And by the torch in the hand of Ceres, or the ether, is doubtless meant the sun, which disperses light over the whole globe of the earth, and if the thing were possible, must have the greatest share in recovering Proserpine, or reinstating the subterraneal spirit. Yet Proserpine still continues and dwells below, after the manner excellently described in the condition betwixt Jupiter and Ceres. For first, it is certain that there are two ways of detaining the spirit, in solid and terrestrial matter,—the one by condensation or obstruction, which is mere violence and imprisonment; the other by administering a proper aliment, which is spontaneous and free. For after the included spirit begins to feed and nourish itself, it is not in a hurry to fly off, but remains as it were fixed in its own earth. And this is the moral of Proserpine’s tasting the pomegranate; and were it not for this, she must long ago have been carried up by Ceres, who with her torch wandered the world over, and so the earth have been left without its spirit. For though the spirit in metals and minerals may perhaps be, after a particular manner, wrought in by the solidity of the mass, yet the spirit of vegetables and animals has open passages to escape at, unless it be willingly detained, in the way of sipping and tasting them.
The second article of agreement, that of Proserpine’s remaining six months with her mother and six with her husband, is an elegant description of the division of the year; for the spirit diffused through the earth lives above-ground in the vegetable world during the summer months, but in the winter returns under ground again.
The attempt of Theseus and Perithous to bring Proserpine away, denotes that the more subtile spirits, which descend in many bodies to the earth, may frequently be unable to drink in, unite with themselves, and carry off the subterraneous spirit, but on the contrary be coagulated by it, and rise no more, so as to increase the inhabitants and add to the dominion of Proserpine.[649] The alchemists will be apt to fall in with our interpretation of the golden bough, whether we will or no, because they promise golden mountains, and the restoration of natural bodies from their stone, as from the gates of Pluto; but we are well assured that their theory had no just foundation, and suspect they have no very encouraging or practical proofs of its soundness. Leaving, therefore, their conceits to themselves, we shall freely declare our own sentiments upon this last part of the fable. We are certain, from numerous figures and expressions of the ancients, that they judged the conservation, and in some degree the renovation, of natural bodies to be no desperate or impossible thing, but rather abstruse and out of the common road than wholly impracticable. And this seems to be their opinion in the present case, as they have placed this bough among an infinite number of shrubs, in a spacious and thick wood. They supposed it of gold, because gold is the emblem of duration. They feigned it adventitious, not native, because such an effect is to be expected from art, and not from any medicine or any simple or mere natural way of working.
XXX.—METIS, OR COUNSEL.
EXPLAINED OF PRINCES AND THEIR COUNCIL.
The ancient poets relate that Jupiter took Metis to wife, whose name plainly denotes counsel, and that he, perceiving she was pregnant by him, would by no means wait the time of her delivery, but directly devoured her; whence himself also became pregnant, and was delivered in a wonderful manner; for he from his head or brain brought forth Pallas armed.
EXPLANATION.—This fable, which in its literal sense appears monstrously absurd, seems to contain a state secret, and shows with what art kings usually carry themselves towards their council, in order to preserve their own authority and majesty not only inviolate, but so as to have it magnified and heightened among the people. For kings commonly link themselves, as it were, in a nuptial bond to their council, and deliberate and communicate with them after a prudent and laudable custom upon matters of the greatest importance, at the same time justly conceiving this no diminution of their majesty; but when the matter once ripens to a decree or order, which is a kind of birth, the king then suffers the council to go on no further, lest the act should seem to depend upon their pleasure. Now, therefore, the king usually assumes to himself whatever was wrought, elaborated, or formed, as it were, in the womb of the council (unless it be a matter of an invidious nature, which he is sure to put from him), so that the decree and the execution shall seem to flow from himself.[650] And as this decree or execution proceeds with prudence and power, so as to imply necessity, it is elegantly wrapped up under the figure of Pallas armed.
Nor are kings content to have this seem the effect of their own authority, free will, and uncontrollable choice, unless they also take the whole honor to themselves, and make the people imagine that all good and wholesome decrees proceed entirely from their own head, that is, their own sole prudence and judgment.
XXXI.—THE SIRENS, OR PLEASURES.
EXPLAINED OF MEN’S PASSION FOR PLEASURES.
INTRODUCTION.—The fable of the Sirens is, in a vulgar sense, justly enough explained of the pernicious incentives to pleasure; but the ancient mythology seems to us like a vintage ill-pressed and trod; for though something has been drawn from it, yet all the more excellent parts remain behind in the grapes that are untouched.
FABLE.—The Sirens are said to be the daughters of Achelous and Terpsichore, one of the Muses. In their early days they had wings, but lost them upon being conquered by the Muses, with whom they rashly contended; and with the feathers of these wings the Muses made themselves crowns, so that from this time the Muses wore wings on their heads, except only the mother to the Sirens.
These Sirens resided in certain pleasant islands, and when, from their watch-tower, they saw any ship approaching, they first detained the sailors by their music, then, enticing them to shore, destroyed them.
Their singing was not of one and the same kind, but they adapted their tunes exactly to the nature of each person, in order to captivate and secure him. And so destructive had they been, that these islands of the Sirens appeared, to a very great distance, white with the bones of their unburied captives.
Two different remedies were invented to protect persons against them, the one by Ulysses, the other by Orpheus. Ulysses commanded his associates to stop their ears close with wax; and he, determining to make the trial, and yet avoid the danger, ordered himself to be tied fast to a mast of the ship, giving strict charge not to be unbound, even though himself should entreat it; but Orpheus, without any binding at all, escaped the danger, by loudly chanting to his harp the praises of the gods, whereby he drowned the voices of the Sirens.
EXPLANATION.—This fable is of the moral kind, and appears no less elegant than easy to interpret. For pleasures proceed from plenty and affluence, attended with activity or exultation of the mind.[651] Anciently their first incentives were quick, and seized upon men as if they had been winged, but learning and philosophy afterwards prevailing, had at least the power to lay the mind under some restraint, and make it consider the issue of things, and thus deprived pleasures of their wings.
This conquest redounded greatly to the honor and ornament of the Muses; for after it appeared, by the example of a few, that philosophy could introduce a contempt of pleasures, it immediately seemed to be a sublime thing that could raise and elevate the soul, fixed in a manner down to the earth, and thus render men’s thoughts, which reside in the head, winged as it were, or sublime.
Only the mother of the Sirens was not thus plumed on the head, which doubtless denotes superficial learning, invented and used for delight and levity; an eminent example whereof we have in Petronius, who, after receiving sentence of death, still continued his gay frothy humor, and as Tacitus observes, used his learning to solace or divert himself, and instead of such discourses as give firmness and constancy of mind, read nothing but loose poems and verses.[652] Such learning as this seems to pluck the crowns again from the Muses’ heads, and restore them to the Sirens.
The Sirens are said to inhabit certain islands, because pleasures generally seek retirement, and often shun society. And for their songs, with the manifold artifice and destructiveness thereof, this is too obvious and common to need explanation. But that particular of the bones stretching like white cliffs along the shores, and appearing afar off, contains a more subtile allegory, and denotes that the examples of others’ calamity and misfortunes, though ever so manifest and apparent, have yet but little force to deter the corrupt nature of man from pleasures.
The allegory of the remedies against the Sirens is not difficult, but very wise and noble; it proposes, in effect, three remedies, as well against subtile as violent mischiefs, two drawn from philosophy and one from religion.
The first means of escaping is to resist the earliest temptation in the beginning, and diligently avoid and cut off all occasions that may solicit or sway the mind; and this is well represented by shutting up the ears, a kind of remedy to be necessarily used with mean and vulgar minds, such as the retinue of Ulysses.
But nobler spirits may converse, even in the midst of pleasures, if the mind be well guarded with constancy and resolution. And thus some delight to make a severe trial of their own virtue, and thoroughly acquaint themselves with the folly and madness of pleasures, without complying or being wholly given up to them; which is what Solomon professes of himself when he closes the account of all the numerous pleasures he gave a loose to, with this expression: “But wisdom still continued with me.” Such heroes in virtue may, therefore, remain unmoved by the greatest incentives to pleasure, and stop themselves on the very precipice of danger; if, according to the example of Ulysses, they turn a deaf ear to pernicious counsel, and the flatteries of their friends and companions, which have the greatest power to shake and unsettle the mind.
But the most excellent remedy, in every temptation, is that of Orpheus, who, by loudly chanting and resounding the praises of the gods, confounded the voices, and kept himself from hearing the music of the Sirens; for divine contemplations exceed the pleasures of sense, not only in power but also in sweetness.
FOOTNOTES: [1] By B. Montagu. Appendix, note 3, 1.
[2] Baconiana, 201.
[4] It is not surprising that ladies then received an education rare in our own times. It should be remembered that in the sixteenth century Latin was the language of courts and schools, of diplomacy, politics, and theology; it was the universal language, and there was then no literature in the modern tongues, except the Italian; indeed all knowledge, ancient and modern, was conveyed to the world in the language of the ancients. The great productions of Athens and Rome were the intellectual all of our ancestors down to the middle of the sixteenth century.
[5] _Prospetto delle Memorie aneddote dei Lincei da_ F. Cancellieri.
Roma, 1823. This fact is quoted by Monsieur Cousin, in a note to his _Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne_.
[6] Sir Robert Cecil.
[7] Gray’s Inn is one of the four Inns or companies for the study of law.
[8] King’s or Queen’s Counsel are barristers that plead for the government; they receive fees but no salary; the first were appointed in the reign of Charles II. Queen’s Counsel extraordinary was a title peculiar to Bacon, granted, as the patent specially states, _honoris causa_.
[9] Letter to Lord Burleigh.
[10] The Solicitor-General is a law-officer inferior in rank to the Attorney-General, with whom he is associated in the management of the law business of the crown. He pleads also for private individuals, but not against government. He has a small salary, but very considerable fees. The salary in Bacon’s time was but seventy pounds.
[11] Bacon was, like other courtiers, in the habit of presenting the Queen with a New Year’s gift. On one occasion, it was a white satin petticoat embroidered with snakes and fruitage, as emblems of wisdom and beauty. The donors varied in rank from the Lord Keeper down to the dust-man.
[12] Essays.
[13] The Attorney-General is the public prosecutor on behalf of the Crown, where the state is actually and not nominally the prosecutor.
He pleads also as a barrister in private causes, provided they are not against the government. As he receives a fee for every case in which the government is concerned, his emoluments are considerable; but he has no salary. His official position secures to him the best practice at the bar. The salary was, in Bacon’s time, but 81_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ per annum; but the situation yielded him six thousand pounds yearly.
[14] Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy.
[15] Essay xvi.
[16] Decisions being given against the parties is no proof of uncorruptness; it is always the party who loses his suit that complains; the gainer receives the price of his bribe, and is silent.
[17] The exactions of his servants appear to have been very great; their indulgence in every kind of extravagance, and the lavish profuseness of his own expenses, were the principal causes of his ruin.
Mallet relates that one day, during the investigation into his conduct, the Chancellor passed through a room where several of his servants were sitting; as they arose from their seats to greet him, “Sit down, my masters,” exclaimed he, “your rise hath been my fall.”
[18] Essay xi.
[20] He was not, as has been erroneously supposed, stripped of his titles of nobility; this was proposed; but it was negatived by the majority formed by means of the bishops.
[21] The Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles the First, was before he ascended the throne the patron of Bacon, who said of him in his will, “my most gracious sovereign, who _ever when he was prince_ was my patron.”
[22] The Seasons.
[23] Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England.
[24] Bracton is one of the earliest writers of English law. He flourished in the thirteenth century. The title of his work is _De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ_, first printed in 1569.
[25] The woods on his estate of Gorhambury.
[26] Of the Interpretation of Nature.
[27] Ibid.
[28] New Atlantis.
[29] Advancement of Learning.
[30] Edinburgh Review.
[31] Essays.
[32] Advancement of Learning.
[33] Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy.
[34] Tattler, No. 267.
[35] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.
[36] Montaigne says, in his author’s address to the reader:— “_Ie veulx qu’on m’y veoye en ma façon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, sans estude et artifice; car c’est moi que je peinds._” He says again elsewhere: “_Ie n’ay pas plus faict mon livre, que mon livre m’a faict; livre consubstantiel à son aucteur, d’une occupation propre, membre de ma vie, non d’une occupation et fin tierce et estrangiere, comme touts aultres livres_.” (Livre ii. ch. xviii.)
[37] Introduction to the Encyclopædia.
[38] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries.
[39] Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.
[40] No. 267.
[41] Essays.
[42] He refers to the following passage in the Gospel of St. John, xviii. 38: “Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.”
[43] He probably refers to the “New Academy,” a sect of Greek philosophers, one of whose moot questions was, “What is truth?” Upon which they came to the unsatisfactory conclusion, that mankind has no criterion by which to form a judgment.
[44] Perhaps he was thinking of St. Augustine.—See _Aug. Confess._ i.
25, 26.
[45] “The wine of evil spirits.”
[46] Genesis i. 3: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”
[47] At the moment when “The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—_Genesis_ ii. 7.
[48] Lucretius, the Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, is alluded [49] He refers to the sect which followed the doctrines of Epicurus.
The life of Epicurus himself was pure and abstemious in the extreme.
One of his leading tenets was, that the aim of all speculation should be to enable men to judge with certainty what course is to be chosen, in order to secure health of body and tranquillity of mind. The adoption, however, of the term “pleasure,” as denoting this object, has at all periods subjected the Epicurean system to great reproach; which, in fact, is due rather to the conduct of many who, for their own purposes, have taken shelter under the system in name only, than to the tenets themselves, which did not inculcate libertinism. Epicurus admitted the existence of the Gods, but he deprived them of the characteristics of Divinity, either as creators or preservers of the world.
[50] Lord Bacon has either translated this passage of Lucretius from memory or has purposely paraphrased it. The following is the literal translation of the original: “’Tis a pleasant thing, from the shore, to behold the dangers of another upon the mighty ocean, when the winds are lashing the main; not because it is a grateful pleasure for any one to be in misery, but because it is a pleasant thing to see those misfortunes from which you yourself are free: ’tis also a pleasant thing to behold the mighty contests of warfare, arrayed upon the plains, without a share in the danger; but nothing is there more delightful than to occupy the elevated temples of the wise, well fortified by tranquil learning, whence you may be able to look down upon others, and see them straying in every direction, and wandering in search of the path of life.”
[51] Michael de Montaigne, the celebrated French Essayist. His _Essays_ embrace a variety of topics, which are treated in a sprightly and entertaining manner, and are replete with remarks indicative of strong native good sense. He died in 1592. The following quotation is from the second book of the _Essays_, c. 18: “Lying is a disgraceful vice, and one that Plutarch, an ancient writer, paints in most disgraceful colors, when he says that it is ‘affording testimony that one _first_ despises God, and then fears men;’ it is not possible more happily to describe its horrible, disgusting, and abandoned nature; for, can we imagine anything more vile than to be cowards with regard to men, and brave with regard to God?”
[52] St. Luke xviii. 8: “Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith upon the earth?”
[53] A portion of this _Essay_ is borrowed from the writings of Seneca.
See his _Letters to Lucilius_, B. iv. Ep. 24 and 82.
[54] “The array of the death-bed has more terrors than death itself.”
This quotation is from Seneca.
[55] He probably alludes to the custom of hanging the room in black where the body of the deceased lay, a practice much more usual in Bacon’s time than at the present day.
[56] Tacit. Hist. ii. 49.
[57] Ad Lucil. 77.
[58] “Reflect how often you do the same things; a man may wish to die, not only because either he is brave or wretched, but even because he is surfeited with life.”
[59] “Livia, mindful of our union, live on, and fare thee well.”—_Suet.
Aug. Vit._ c. 100.
[60] “His bodily strength and vitality were now forsaking Tiberius, but not his duplicity.”—_Ann._ vi. 50.
[61] This was said as a reproof to his flatterers, and in spirit is not unlike the rebuke administered by Canute to his retinue.—_Suet. Vespas.
Vit._ c. 23.
[63] “If it be for the advantage of the Roman people, strike.”—_Tac.
Hist._ i. 41.
[64] “If aught remains to be done by me, dispatch.”—_Dio Cass._ 76, _ad fin._ [65] These were the followers of Zeno, a philosopher of Citium, in Cyprus, who founded the Stoic school, or “School of the Portico,” at Athens. The basis of his doctrines was the duty of making virtue the object of all our researches. According to him, the pleasures of the mind were preferable to those of the body, and his disciples were taught to view with indifference health or sickness, riches or poverty, pain or pleasure.
[66] “Who reckons the close of his life among the boons of nature.”
Lord Bacon here quotes from memory; the passage is in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, and runs thus:— “Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem, Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat Naturæ”— “Pray for strong resolve, void of the fear of death, that reckons the closing period of life among the boons of nature.”
[67] He alludes to the song of Simeon, to whom the Holy Ghost had revealed, “that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” When he beheld the infant Jesus in the temple, he took the child in his arms and burst forth into a song of thanksgiving, commencing, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”—_St.
Luke_ ii. 29.
[68] “When dead, the same person shall be beloved.”—_Hor. Ep._ ii. 1, 14.
[69] “Behold, he is in the desert.”—_St. Matthew_ xxiv. 26.
[70] “Behold, he is in the secret chambers.”—_Ib._ [71] He alludes to 1 Corinthians xiv. 23: “If, therefore, the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?”
[72] Psalm i. 1: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”
[73] This dance, which was originally called the Morisco dance is supposed to have been derived from the Moors of Spain; the dancers in earlier times blackening their faces to resemble Moors. It was probably a corruption of the ancient Pyrrhic dance, which was performed by men in armor, and which is mentioned as still existing in Greece, in Byron’s “Song of the Greek Captive:”— “You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet.”
Attitude and gesture formed one of the characteristics of the dance. It is still practised in some parts of England.—_Rabelais, Pantag._ ii. 7.
[75] He alludes to the words in Revelation, c. iii. v. 14, 15, 16: “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.—I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Laodicea was a city of Asia Minor. St. Paul established the church there which is here referred to.
[76] St. Matthew xii. 30.
[77] “In the garment there may be many colors, but let there be no rending of it.”
[78] “Avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called.”—1 _Tim._ vi. 20.
[79] He alludes to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, significant of the limited duration of his kingdom.—See _Daniel_ ii. 33, 41.
[80] Mahomet proselytized by giving to the nations which he conquered, the option of the Koran or the sword.
[81] “To deeds so dreadful could religion prompt.” The poet refers to the sacrifice by Agamemnon, the Grecian leader, of his daughter Iphigenia, with the view of appeasing the wrath of Diana.—_Lucret._ i.
95.
[82] He alludes to the massacre of the Huguenots, or Protestants, in France, which took place on St. Bartholomew’s day, August 24, 1572, by the order of Charles IX. and his mother, Catherine de Medici. On this occasion about 60,000 persons perished, including the Admiral De Coligny, one of the most virtuous men that France possessed, and the main stay of the Protestant cause.
[83] More generally known as “The Gunpowder Plot.”
[84] Isa. xiv. 14.
[85] Allusion is made to the “caduceus,” with which Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, summoned the souls of the departed to the infernal regions.
[86] “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”—_James_ i. 20.
[87] He alludes to Cosmo de Medici, or Cosmo I., chief of the Republic of Florence, the encourager of literature and the fine arts.
[88] Job ii. 10.—“Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”
[89] By “public revenges,” he means punishment awarded by the state with the sanction of the laws.
[90] He alludes to the retribution dealt by Augustus and Anthony to the murderers of Julius Cæsar. It is related by ancient historians, as a singular fact, that not one of them died a natural death.
[91] Henry III. of France was assassinated in 1599, by Jacques Clement, a Jacobin monk, in the frenzy of fanaticism. Although Clement justly suffered punishment, the end of this bloodthirsty and bigoted tyrant may be justly deemed a retribution dealt by the hand of an offended Providence; so truly does the Poet say:— “neque enim lex æquior ulla Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.”
[92] Sen. Ad Lucil. 66.
[93] Ibid. 53.
[94] Stesichorus, Apollodorus, and others. Lord Bacon makes a similar reference to this myth in his treatise “On the Wisdom of the Ancients.”
“It is added with great elegance, to console and strengthen the minds of men, that this mighty hero (Hercules) sailed in a cup or ‘urceus,’ in order that they may not too much fear and allege the narrowness of their nature and its frailty; as if it were not capable of such fortitude and constancy; of which very thing Seneca argued well, when he said, ‘It is a great thing to have at the same time the frailty of a man, and the security of a God.’”
[95] Funereal airs. It must be remembered that many of the Psalms of David were written by him when persecuted by Saul, as also in the tribulation caused by the wicked conduct of his son Absalom. Some of them, too, though called “The Psalms of David,” were really composed by the Jews in their captivity at Babylon; as, for instance, the 137th Psalm, which so beautifully commences, “By the waters of Babylon there we sat down.” One of them is supposed to be the composition of Moses.
[96] This fine passage, beginning at “Prosperity is the blessing,” which was not published till 1625, twenty-eight years after the first Essays, has been quoted by Macaulay, with considerable justice, as a proof that the writer’s fancy did not decay with the advance of old age, and that his style in his later years became richer and softer.
The learned critic contrasts this passage with the terse style of the Essay of Studies (Essay 50), which was published in 1597.
[98] Tac. Hist. ii. 76.
[99] A word now unused, signifying the “traits,” or “features.”
[101] Proverbs x. 1: “A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”
[103] This word seems here to mean “a plan,” or “method,” as proved by its results.
[104] Ends in.
[105] There is considerable justice in this remark. Children should be taught to do what is right for its own sake, and because it is their duty to do so, and not that they may have the selfish gratification of obtaining the reward which their companions have failed to secure, and of being led to think themselves superior to their companions. When launched upon the world, emulation will be quite sufficiently forced upon them by stern necessity.
[106] “Select _that course of life_ which is the most advantageous; habit will soon render it pleasant and easily endured.”
[107] His meaning is, that if clergymen have the expenses of a family to support, they will hardly find means for the exercise of benevolence toward their parishioners.
[108] “He preferred his aged wife Penelope to immortality.” This was when Ulysses was entreated by the goddess Calypso to give up all thoughts of returning to Ithaca, and to remain with her in the [111] So prevalent in ancient times was the notion of the injurious effects of the eye of envy, that, in common parlance, the Romans generally used the word “_præfiscini_,”—“without risk of enchantment,” or “fascination,” when they spoke in high terms of themselves. They supposed that they thereby averted the effects of enchantment produced by the evil eye of any envious person who might at that moment possibly be looking upon them. Lord Bacon probably here alludes to St. Mark vii.
21, 22: “Out of the heart of men proceedeth—deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye.” Solomon also speaks of the evil eye, Prov. xxiii. 6, and xxviii. 22.
[112] To be even with him.
[113] “There is no person a busybody, but what he is ill-natured too.”
This passage is from the Stichus of Plautus.
[114] Narses superseded Belisarius in the command of the armies of Italy, by the orders of the Emperor Justinian. He defeated Totila, the king of the Goths (who had taken Rome), in a decisive engagement, in which the latter was slain. He governed Italy with consummate ability for thirteen years, when he was ungratefully recalled by Justin the Second, the successor of Justinian.
[115] Tamerlane, or Timour, was a native of Samarcand, of which territory he was elected emperor. He overran Persia, Georgia, Hindostan, and captured Bajazet, the valiant Sultan of the Turks, at the battle of Angora, 1402, whom he is said to have inclosed in a cage of iron. His conquests extended from the Irtish and Volga to the Persian Gulf, and from the Ganges to the Grecian Archipelago. While preparing for the invasion of China, he died, in the 70th year of his age, A. D. 1405. He was tall and corpulent in person, but was maimed in one hand, and lame on the right side.
[116] Spartian Vit. Adrian, 15.
[117] Comes under the observation.
[120] He probably alludes to the custom of the Athenians, who frequently ostracized or banished by vote their public men, lest they should become too powerful.
[121] From _in_ and _video_,—“to look upon;” with reference to the so-called “evil eye” of the envious.
[123] See St. Matthew xiii. 25.
[124] Beholden.
[125] He iniquitously attempted to obtain possession of the person of Virginia, who was killed by her father Virginius, to prevent her from falling a victim to his lust. This circumstance caused the fall of the Decemviri at Rome, who had been employed in framing the code of laws afterwards known as “The Laws of the Twelve Tables.” They narrowly escaped being burned alive by the infuriated populace.
[126] “We are a sufficient theme for contemplation, the one for the notwithstanding this censure of Bacon, to have been of the same opinion with Epicurus:— “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study for mankind is man.”
Indeed, Lord Bacon seems to have misunderstood the saying of Epicurus, who did not mean to recommend man as the sole object of the bodily vision, but as the proper theme for mental contemplation.
[127] Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur.—_Pub. Syr. Sent._ 15. (A. L.
ii. proœ. 10.)
[128] He refers here to the judgment of Paris, mentioned by Ovid in his Epistles, of the Heroines.
[129] Montaigne has treated this subject before Bacon, under the title of _De l’incommodité de la Grandeur_. (B. iii. ch. vii.)
[130] “Since you are not what you were, there is no reason why you should wish to live.”
[131] “Death presses heavily upon him, who, well known to all others, dies unknown to himself.”—_Sen. Thyest._ ii. 401.
[132] “And God turned to behold the works which his hands had made, and he saw that everything was very good.”—See _Gen._ i. 31.