Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/83

Rh reader cannot but notice Bacon's manner of introduction. It is that of a practised debater. Bacon is a good opener. Many of the opening sentences arrest attention at once, as it was undoubtedly intended they should. Sometimes the thought is expressed in an aphoristic figure, as, "Revenge is a kind of wild justice," Of Revenge. Sometimes it is an apt quotation, like "What is truth? said jesting Pilate," Of Truth. Sometimes it is a great thought inimitably set in speech. "God Almighty first planted a garden," is the jewel-like sentence that opens the essay Of Gardens. When the weary wayfarer sees that legend shining resplendent over the gate of an old-time garden, he must needs enter in to refresh his spirit.

As has been said, Bacon's model for brief and pointed expression is Tacitus, whom he had read "wholly, and with diligence and attention." Tacitus more than any other author contributed to the swiftness and philosophic range of Bacon's thought, and the other classical writers who helped to make him "a full man," stand, after Tacitus, probably in this order, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Livy, Vergil, Ovid, the two Plinies, Suetonius, Lucretius, Lucian, Caesar, Lucan, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Martial, Plato, Homer, Herodotus and Aristotle. The Greeks make way for the Romans in this list, both in number and in frequency of quotation. Plutarch was a favorite Greek author with Bacon, as he was with Shakspere and the other Elizabethans. There are two reasons for the Rh