Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/103

Rh wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are," Of Seeming Wise.

"In sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action," Of Regiment of Health.

"For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love," Of Friendship. To vary Bacon, I have given the rule, if a man cannot find a bit of wisdom for himself, he may close the book.

What kind of man was the writer of these Essays? Politically, as was natural in a man of family born and bred under the Tudor government, Bacon was an imperialist. His ideal was a strong, centralized government. He believed in rank and dignities, and thought ruling a natural function of the nobility. Though a contemporary of the young Oliver Cromwell, he was no democrat. Neither was Shakspere, born a man of the people. But Bacon would hardly have pushed the doctrine of royal divine right to the breaking point. He would have made concessions to the rising commonalty. Tolerance is a peculiarly attractive virtue and Bacon possessed it in a high degree. His wise prince is a sort of benevolent despot, a classical despot humanized by the ideas of the Renaissance. As to the conduct of life, there is much worldly wisdom inculcated in Bacon's maxims, some of which are frankly Machiavellian. Human nature is complex, and the bigger the man, the greater the complexity. The Essays are as surely the expression of a genuinely religious spirit, as Rh