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Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes,
Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats.
The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise,
By rain and dews are water'd from the skies;
Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts,
And garden herbs, serv'd at the greatest feasts;
And bread, that is all viands' firmament,

And gives a firm and solid nourishment;
And wine, man's spirits for to recreate;
And oil, his face for to exhilarate.

The sappy cedars, tall like stately tow'rs
High-flying birds do harbour in their bow'rs;
The holy storks, that are the travellers,
Choose for to dwell and build within the firs;
The climbing goats hang on steep mountain's side;
The digging conies in the rocks do bide.
The moon, so constant in inconstancy,
Doth rule the monthly seasons orderly;
The sun, eye of the world, doth know his race,
And when to shew, and when to hide his face.
Thou makest darkness, that it may be night,
Whenas the savage beasts, that fly the light,
(As conscious of man's hatred) leave their den,
And range abroad secur'd from sight of men.
Then do the forests ring of lions roaring,
That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring;
But when the day appears, they back do fly,
And in their dens again do lurking lie.
Then man goes forth to labour in the field,
Whereby his grounds more rich increase may yield.
O Lord, thy providence sufficeth all;

Thy goodness, not restrained, but general
Over thy creatures: the whole earth doth flow
With thy great largeness pour'd forth here below.
Nor is it earth alone exalts thy name,

But seas and streams likewise do spread the same.
The rolling seas unto the lot doth fall
Of beasts innumerable, great and small;
There do the stately ships plough up the floods;
The greater navies look like walking woods;
The fishes there far voyages do make,
To divers shores their journey they do take.
There hast thou set the great Leviathan,
That makes the seas to seeth like boiling pan.
All these do ask of thee their meat to live,
Which in due season thou to them dost give."

Some allowance must be made (no doubt) for the fact that Bacon is translating and not writing original verse. Nevertheiess a true poet, even of a low order, could hardly betray so clearly the cramping influence of rhyme and metre. There is far less beauty of diction and phrase in these verse translations than in any of the prose works that are couched in an elevated style. Possibly the nature of the subject was against him. Theological verse, like theological sculpture, might seem to require something of the archaic, and a close adherence to the simplicity of the original prose. But I cannot help coming to the conclusion that, although Bacon might have written better verse on some subject of his own choosing, the chances are that even his best would not have been very good.

A brief notice is claimed by the Colours of Good and Evil, published in 1597 in the same volume as the first edition of the Essays. The title signifies the Fallacies, or "Colours," by which a persuader labours "to make things appear good or evil, and that in higher or lower degree." Each "colour" is exemplified by an instance, and followed by its "reprehension" or refutation. One of the ten Colours set forth in this treatise may serve as a specimen of the rest.

"Quod rem integram servat, bonum; quod sine receptu est, malum. Nam se recipere non posse impotentiae genus est; potentia autem bonum." [That course which keeps the matter in a man's power is good; that which leaves him without retreat is bad: for to have no means of retreating is to be, in a sort, powerless, and power is a good thing.]

"Hereof Æsop framed the fable of the two frogs, that consulted together in the time of drought (when many plashes that they had repaired to were dry), what was to be done; and the one propounded to go down into a deep well, because it was like the water would not fail there: but the other answered, 'Yea; but if it do fail, how shall we get up again?" And the reason is, that human actions are so uncertain and subject to perils, as that seemeth the best course which hath most passages out of it.

2

"Appertaining to this persuasion, the forms are, You shall engage yourself; on the other side, Tantum quantum voles sumes ex fortuna, &c., you shall keep the matter in your own hands.

"The reprehension of it is, that Proceeding and resolving in all actions is necessary: for as he saith well, Not to resolve is to resolve; and many times it breeds as many necessities, and engageth as far in some other sort, as to resolve.

1 Spedding, Works, vii. 65-92.

2i.e. "entangle."

"So it is but the covetous man's disease translated into power; for the

covetous man will enjoy nothing, because he will have his full store and possibility to enjoy the more; so by this reason a man should execute nothing, because he should be still indifferent and at liberty to execute anything. Besides, necessity, and this same jacta est alea, hath many times an advantage, because it awaketh the powers of the mind, and strengtheneth endeavour. Ceteris pares necessitate certe superiores estis [Being equal otherwise, in necessity you have the better]."

§ 60 THE METHOD OF THE "ESSAYS" 1

The Colours of the Good and Evil are more closely connected with the Essays than might be supposed. Both alike are amplifications (the Essays being more ample and varied) of a species of rhetorical equipment called by Bacon Antitheta, "Opposite Maxims," or "Antitheses of Things"; the object of which is thus set forth in the De Augmentis (vi. 3) :

"I would have all topics, which there is frequent occasion to handle (whether they relate to proofs and refutations, or to persuasions and dissuasions, or to praise and blame), studied and prepared beforehand; and not only so, but the case exaggerated both ways with the utmost force of the wit, and urged unfairly as it were and quite beyond the truth. And the best way of making such a collection, with a view to use as well as to brevity, would be to contract these common places into certain acute and concise sentences; to be as skeins or bottoms of thread which may be

1 As to the word "Essay," it is interesting to contrast what Bacon and Ben Jonson say of it.

The former (in the cancelled dedication to Prince Henry, see below, p. 438) distinguishes "Essays" from "just treatises," implying that his work must be expected to be a little disconnected and abrupt: "Certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously, which I have called Essays. The word is late, but the thing is ancient. For Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but Essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of Epistles."

Ben Jonson will have none of the Essayists. They are the writers "that turn over books, and are equally searching in all papers, that write out of what they presently find or meet, without choice by which means it happens that what they have discredited and impugned in one work, they have, before or after, extolled the same in another. Such are all the Essayists, even their master, Montaigne" (Ben Jonson's Works, ed. Gifford, p. 747).

Considering the great admiration expressed by Ben Jonson for Bacon's style (see p. 453) one is a little surprised to find no mention of Bacon's Essays, and to note the assumption that Montaigne is "Master of the Essayists." It may be noted that in 1625, describing the new edition of his Essays to Father Fulgentio, Bacon says that in Italy the book was called Saggi Morali, "but I gave it a weightier name, calling it 'Faithful Discourses,' or 'The Inwards of Things."

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unwinded at large when they are wanted. A few instances of the thing, having a great many by me, I think fit to propound by way of example. I call them Antitheses of Things."

Many of the acute and concise sentences, thus propounded in the De Augmentis, will be found interspersed in the Essays, of which they often constitute a kind of framework. They are the "skeins or bottoms of thread," to use Bacon's own metaphor, while the examples, illustrations, and inferences, represent the " unwinding."

In the ten Essays which complete the earliest edition (1597), the "acuteness and conciseness" of the style are most marked and are well suited to the subjects treated of: (1) Study, (2) Discourse, (3) Ceremonies and Respects, (4) Followers and Friends, (5) Suitors, (6) Expense, (7) Regiment of Health, (8) Honour and Reputation, (9) Faction, (10) Negotiating. These subjects do not admit of a rhetorical or periodic style, but afford scope for common sense, humour, terse force, and apt homely illustration. Bacon was not at this time conscious that he was writing a book that would last as long as the English language. He published these "fragments of his conceits" (as he tells us in the dedication to his brother Anthony) to prevent the circulation of pirated copies, not without an apology, likening them to "the new half-pence which, though the silver were good, the pieces were small." 1

In October, 1612, the second and enlarged edition of forty Essays was entered at Stationers' Hall; and in the following December Chamberlain writes that "Sir Francis Bacon hath set out new Essays, where in a chapter on Deformity" (Essay xliv.), "the world takes notice that he points out his little cousin to the life." The "little cousin" was Bacon's former patron Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who had died in May, 1612; and if the world" was right, Bacon probably wrote the new Essay in question (and perhaps others of the new Essays) after May in that year. That he had spent some labour upon the work appears from the intended dedication to Henry Prince of Wales (cancelled owing to the Prince's death on the 9th of November, 1612), in which he says that, although he has not had leisure to write "just treatises" (i.e. regular treatises) by reason of his continual service, he has endeavoured to make them "not vulgar, but of a nature whereof a man shall find much in experience, little in books; so as they are neither repetitions nor fancies."

1 For the early editions of the Essays, see Spedding, Works, vi. 521-591.

The titles of the first three Essays, Religion, Death, Goodness and Goodness of Nature, at once show that the new volume rises to a higher level than the former: and on the same level are the Essays on Empire, Atheism, Superstition, Fortune, and Greatness of Kingdoms. Yet though the language is more elevated and periodical than that of the first edition, it still so far savours of the Antitheta that he describes his work to the Prince as "certain brief notes, set down rather significantly than curiously," and thinks it necessary to defend the style by an appeal to Seneca. The word Essays, he says, is late-it was perhaps borrowed from the Essais of Montaigne, which were published in 1580-" but the thing is ancient. For Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius if one mark them well, are but Essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles."

On the death of the Prince of Wales Bacon dedicated the new volume to his brother-in-law Sir John Constable. The new dedication is couched in an altogether lower tone than the first:

"My last Essays I dedicated to my dear brother Master Anthony Bacon, who is with God. Looking amongst my papers this vacation I found others of the same nature; which if I myself shall not suffer to be lost, it seemeth the world will not, by the often printing of the former."

It would be unsafe to take too literally this casual "finding" of the new Essays in the course of the vacation, or to infer from it that Bacon under-rated his new work. If there is any discrepancy between the tone of the later dedication to Sir John Constable and the cancelled earlier dedication to the Prince, the latter probably best represents the labour spent on the new Essays, and the author's opinion of them.

The final edition of 1625 contains fifty-eight Essays (eighteen more than the second edition): but the author no longer excuses them as "dispersed meditations." In number, it is true, there

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