POEMS. Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear. Venus and Adonis. Line 145 For greatest scandal waits on greatest state. Lucrece. Line 1006, Crabbed age and youth Cannot live together. The Passionate Pilgrim, viii. Have you not heard it said full oft, A woman's nay doth stand for naught? As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May.1 Ibid. xiv. Ibid. xv. She in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime. Sonnet iii. And stretched metre of an antique song. Sonnet xvii. But thy eternal summer shall not fade. Sonnet xviii. The painful warrior, famoused for fight, 1 See Barnfield, p. 143. Sonnet xxx. 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, 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 Sonnet cxvi. That full star that ushers in the even. Sonnet cxxxii. O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies 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. A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. Essay xvi. Atheism. 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. Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.1 Essay xix. Empire. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Essay 1. Of Studies. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. 1 Cf. Shelley, Hellas. 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. Knowledge is power. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.1 Meditationes Sacra. De Hæresibus. 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. 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." Apothegm, No 17. 1 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength. - Prov. xxiv. 5. 2 Cf. Fuller, p. 210. '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.1 Advancement of Learning. Book i. (1605.) It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind. Ibid. Book ii. 1 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. We are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. Tennyson, The Day Dream. (L'Envoi.) 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. |