Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/102

Rh, that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn," Of Great Place. In manufactures and commerce he thought the Low Countries had "the best mines above ground in the world," Of Seditions and Troubles. And what a splendid metaphor that is in Of Vicissitude of Things,—"The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion are two; deluges and earthquakes." The image here transcends the thought and as artistry produces upon the mind the same effect in kind as the cataclysm itself. The force of language can no farther go.

The combination of wisdom in thought and brevity and picturesqueness in form, what Lady Anne Bacon called her son's "enigmatic gilded writing," makes Bacon's Essays the most quotable prose in English. Sharing the world-wide fame of Shakspere in this respect, many of Bacon's words and phrases of singular beauty and power are now fast woven into the web of English speech. No other prose work is so often quoted or has furnished so many quotations, even for those persons who have never read the essays in whole or in part. Not infrequently Bacon is cited for the Bible, but more often he is confounded by the unwary with Shakspere. Every essay is quotable,—

"The virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude," Of Adversity.

"It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself," Of Wisdom for a Man's Self.

"It hath been an opinion, that the French are Rh