Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Like stones of worth, they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.

Sonnet lii.

And art made tongue-tied by authority.

Sonnet lxvi.

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill. Ibid.

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.

Sonnet lxx.

Do not drop in for an after-loss.

Ah, do not, when my heart hath scap'd this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purpos'd overthrow.

Sonnet xc.

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

Sonnet xcviii.

And beauty, making beautiful old rhyme.

Sonnet cvi.

My nature is subdu'd

To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.

Sonnet cxi.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.

Sonnet cxvi.

That full star that ushers in the even.

Sonnet cxxxii.

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear!

A Lover's Complaint, St. xlii.

FRANCIS BACON.

1561 - 1626.

WORKS (ED. SPEDDING AND ELLIS).

Come home to men's business and bosoms. Dedication to the Essays. Ed. 1625.

No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.

Essay i. Of Truth.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.1

Essay v. Of Adversity.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Essay viii. Of Marriage and Single Life.

A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.2 Essay xvi. Atheism.

1 As aromatic plants bestow

No spicy fragrance while they grow;
But crush'd or trodden to the ground,
Diffuse their balmy sweets around.

Goldsmith, The Captivity, Act i.

The good are better made by ill,

As odours crushed are sweeter still.

2 Who are a little wise the best fools be.

Rogers, Jacqueline, St. 3.

Donne, The Triple Fool.

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our

Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.1 Essay xix. Empire.

God Almighty first planted a garden.2

Some books are to swallowed, and some digested.

Essay xlvi. Of Gardens.

be tasted, others to be few to be chewed and

Essay. Of Studies.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Ibid.

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Ibid.

I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.

Maxims of the Law. Preface. religion. Fuller, The Holy State. The True Church Antiquary.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

Pope, Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 15. 1 Kings are like stars- they rise and set-they have The worship of the world, but no repose.

Shelley, Hellas.

2 God the first garden made, and the first city Cain. Cowley, The Garden, Essay v.

God made the country, and man made the town.

Cowper, The Task, Book i. Line 749.

Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit

urbes. Varro, De res rustica, iii. 1.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences
Proposition touching Amendment of Laws.

books.

Knowledge is power. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

Meditationes Sacræ. De Hæresibus.

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved for ever in amber, a more than royal tomb.2

Historia Vita et Mortis; Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. i. Exper. 100.

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak, as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

Letter of Expostulation to Coke.

1 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength. — Prov. xxiv. 5.

2 The bee enclos'd and through the amber shown,
Seems buried in the juice which was his own.

Martial, Book iv. 31. Hay's Translation.
I saw a flie within a beade

Of amber cleanly buried.

Herrick, On a Fly buried in Amber.

Pretty in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!

Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Line 169.

My Lord St. Albans said that nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.1 Apothegm, No. 17.

"Antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi." These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves.2

Advancement of Learning. Book i. (1605.)

1 Often the cockloft is empty, in those whom Nature hath built many stories high. — Fuller, Andronicus, ad fin. 1.

2 As in the little, so in the great world, reason will tell you that old age or antiquity is to be accounted by the farther distance from the beginning and the nearer approach to the end. The times wherein we now live being in propriety of speech the most ancient since the world's creation. George Hakewill, An Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Govern ment of the World. London, 1627.

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it? - Pascal, Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum.

It is worthy of remark that a thought which is often quoted from Francis Bacon occurs in [Giordano] Bruno's Cena di Cenere, published in 1584; I mean the notion that the later times are more aged than the earlier. — Whewell, Philos. of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. ii. p. 198, London, 1847.

We are Ancients of the earth,

And in the morning of the times.

Tennyson, The Day Dream. (L'Envoi.)

« AnteriorContinuar »