Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/100

Rh to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested," Of Studies. So he writes, "Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they ever fly by twilight," Of Suspicion. Another figure brings into mind the recollection of some low-studded Elizabethan room, wainscoted and ceiled with quartered oak. The picture is all the more vivid, because it is so unexpected, as if a curtain suddenly drawn aside should give a glimpse through a window where no window was known to be. Speaking of the secure fame of Cicero, Of Vain-Glory, he says almost casually that vanity contributed to it, "like unto varnish, that maketh ceilings not only shine, but last." Bacon was fond of such sharp breaks in thought. They arrested attention. The stuff, however, of this image was a part of his daily life. "He seated himself, for the commodity of his studies and practice, amongst the Honourable Society of Gray's-Inn; of which House he was a member: where he erected that elegant pile or structure, commonly known by the name of The Lord Bacon's Lodgings, which he inhabited, by turns, the most part of his life (some few years only excepted) unto his dying day." (Dr. Rawley.) Picture to yourself Bacon, the lifelong student, in his chambers. The harassing business of the day in the House of Commons or in attendance at Court is done, and he has retired to his writing-room to converse with the men of old he loved so well. He reads the vain Cicero or the sententious Tacitus, he sets down in his common-place book what he has learned from Rh